LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, I 



Chap. 

Shelf , C O X 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE FOUR NEW STARS 



1789-1889. 




ADDRESS 



_y 



or — 



Hon. S-A.M:XJB31i S. 003C 

OF NEW YORK, 



ADDRESS 



— or — / 

HON, SAMUEL S. COX, 



OF NEW YORK, 



HXJROlSr, DAKOTA, 



July -4, 185 



"O eagle, flown beyond this faded day. 
The height is won, thou hast thine heart's desire ; 
A wider ether would thy wings essay. 
And the fire in thee seeks the source of fire.'' 



" Imperiiim quo neque ab exordio uUum fere miniis, neque incrementis toto 
orbe ampliiis hmnana potest memoria recordari. " 

EXJTEOPIUS, LIB. ]II. 



NlKTROPOLITAN JOB PrINX, 

No. 38 Vesey Street. 

1889. 



^1 



ADDRESS 

OF 

Hon. SAMUEL S. COX, of New York, 

■4th Jt-ily, 1889,- 
AX HURON, DAKOTA. 



Citizens or Dakota, 

Ladles and Gentlemen : 

Philosopliers have discovered pivotal eras in the progress 
of mankind . Sir Edward S. Creas}' has written a book en- 
titled, " The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World — from 
Marathon to Waterloo." These battles were the outcome of 
certain crucial periods. They marked great changes in the 
trend of that progress. 

The American Revolution was one of these epochal points. 
It may not have been as significant as the battle of Marathon, 
which drove back the Persian to his luxurious realm ; or the 
battle of Metaurus, upon which hinged the supreme power 
either of Rome or Carthage ; or the advent of Cromwell, which 
changed the order of English representative government ; or 
the French Revolution, which uprooted the Feudal system 
and the divine right of royalty. 

AMERICAN REVOLUTION — PIVOTAL. 

But, doubtless, the Declaration of our Independence made 
upon this day 113 j-ears ago — of which Saratoga was but an in- 
cident — has done moi:e for the well being of our kind than all 
the decisive battles of the world. The latter claim attention, 
because, as Professor Creasy remarks, they are of enduring 
importance and have for us an abiding and actual interest, 
both while we investigate the chain of causes which led up 
to them and effects by which they have helped to make us 
what we are, and also while we speculate on Avhat we probably 
should have been if they had been otherwise. 

NOT LIBERTY, BUT INDEPENDENCE. 

It is a mistake to suppose that our fathers, who made that 
Declaration, were contending for their liberties. ■ Their 
liberties were already fixed in the English Charters and Bills 
of Right through centuries of struggle. 



We did not contend for onr liberties. "We never lost our 
liberties. When the King and his Ministers strove to despoil 
US of our liberties, the colonies struck for Independence. 
They had rehearsed their traditional priidleges and chartered 
rights as British subjects. Having failed in having these 
recognized, they declared for the inalienable rights of human 
nature. 

The Declaration was, in one sense, a "glittering generality." 
But it glittered like a meteor, and became fixed above our 
hemisphere as a pole star, for the guidance not only of our 
own but of other nations seeking liberty and independence. 

THE ARTICLES OF CONFEUEEATION. 

The Articles of Confederation were the first attempt 
towards Union. They were not fully ratified until the first 
day of March, 1781. They proved inadequate for the purposes 
of a nation. Their j^rime defect was in the want of power to 
raise revenue and to regulate commerce. In other regards 
they were a failure. This lamentable impotence early 
manifested the need of a radical change. Yirginia and New 
York felt this most urgently, and their statesmen pioneered 
the path to Union through a wilderness of doubt and anxiety. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ERA — 1789. 

But the grand event connected with our hemisphere — the 
consummate flower of our struggle — was the Constitution. 
That instrument embodied no abstractions. It ordained con- 
crete modes, and co-ordinate and tripartite branches for a 
government of general welfare. It provided machinery in- 
dispensable for the development of free enterprise and the 
security of our liberties. 

The experience which made known the defects of the Con- 
federation, led to the appointment of deputies to the conven- 
tion at Philadelphia, on the 14th May, 1787. The work of that 
body was concluded on September 17tli of that year, and under 
the sign manual of George Washington it was transmitted to the 
Congress of the Confederation. In the letter of transmission, 
Washington said that it was " obviousl}^ impracticable in the 
Federal Government to secure all rights of independence — 
sovereignty to each, — and yet provide for the interest and 
safety of all. Individuals entering into society must give up a 
portion of liberty to preserve the rest." He pleaded for the 
consolidation of the Union, for in that was involved our pros- 
perity, safety and national existence. 

The Congress, on September 28th, 1787, transmitted the Con- 
stitution, with Washington's letter, to the several legislatures 
of the States, to be submitted in each State to a convention of 
delegates chosen by the people. A day was fixed for its ratifi- 



cation b}' tlie State conveutioiis, but it was not until tlie year 
1789, tbat the requisite number of States had given in their 
ratification. A quorum of l)oth bodies appeared on the 6th 
ApriL Upon that day, on a count, it appeared that Washing- 
ton had been elected President ; and on the 30th day of that 
month, in the City of New York, he took the oath, entered 
upon his duties, and delivered the first Inaugural Address in 
tlie new government. 

It was, therefore, eminently fit that the people should cele- 
brate, in the City of New York, the 30th of April as the begin- 
ning of our Constitutional Government — for it was upon that 
day that the system was first put in motion, although the 4:th 
of March, 1789, began our Constitutional jjeriod. 

PROGRESS IN CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

How has that constitution continued to operate ? What 
impediments has it overcome ? What improvements, by 
amendment, have been made ? What changes were enforced 
by civil war ? What maturity' have we reached by reason of 
the capacity acquired by the act of Union ? What institutions 
have given way, and what progress has been made ? 

To answer these questions, would be to depict the attributes 
and signalize the excellency of that Constitutional Government 
which marks our century of progress as the grandest era of 
history. 

Thus, then, was consummated that ascending series of acts 
which began with the colonial charters, and led to our inde- 
pendence thirteen years before the Union. Finis coronal opus. 
Truly, the year '89 may be called annus mirahilis ! 

Were the elemental forces produced by our Revolution lim- 
ited to this hemisphere? No! they vibrated through viewless 
media of transmission throughout the old world, and elec- 
trified at least one nation from slavish inertness. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION — 1789. 

It was not through Lafayette alone, nor the other intrepid 
soldiers who gave their service and their life to our struggle, 
that rational freedom was vindicated in France. The evils 
under which that country had suffered during many centuries, 
culminated in " The French Revolution ; " but the inspiration 
for Republican Government came from the Western Hemis- 
phere. 

Why should history always speak of that European effort 
for the rights of man, as condemned by frantic innovations, 
tragical experiences, and baleful lessons of anarchy and blood ? 
Why confound the scoria of the volcano with the grand fea- 
tures of the political upheaval ? " The odium of history " be- 
longs more to the tyranny which led to the excesses. 



6 

Because tlie wisdom of Wasliingtou and liis compatriots, 
and our better condition, saved us from a bloody civil ordeal, 
let us not forget that Republicanism in France had a difierent 
stimulus from our own. France had to contend for liberty lost, 
and not for independence of foreign control. Her revolution 
was a cataclj'sm. She was then subjected and is yet, measur- 
ably, to reverses and convulsions, which to us were impossible 
and almost inconceivable. But from that spring time of sweat 
and toil, what a glorious harvest the century has yielded ! 

THE FRUITION OF A CENTURY. 

Six days after our own grand centennial, France. celebrated 
her own republic of 1789. Behold ! amidst that display of 
citizens and soldiers — colonial soldiers from Algiers and Annam 
— amidst the vivas of the populace, and in the presence of 
strangers from every land ; with the blaze of lights and colors 
and the blare of trumpets, and the music of bands on river and 
boulevard by night and day, both France and America give 
evidence that transatlantic liberalities are still vital in the 
hemispheres of the world ! Everywhere our own ensign is en- 
twined with the tri-color of the French Republic. The em- 
blematic birds and beasts of prey, and other dynastic symbols 
of czars, kaisers and queens, are conspicuous by their absence. 
Happily, the dynastic royalties are not there to disturb the 
harmony nor mar the magnificence of the scene. But Art and 
Industry are there in all their beauty and skill, in the vanguard 
of progress under the civil emblems and fasces of tlie united 
republics. We see reproduced in the grand procession, the 
conspicuous features and results of the new order — artistic, 
industrial and political. 

Mankind itself is here in epitome, moving down the vistas 
of the grand plazas, and in the aisles of the Trochodera. Above 
all rises the Eifel tower. Hashing its electric fires to the infinite 
stars, under which a hundred thousand Americans join in the 
acclamation, — " Vive la Bepuhlique ! " 

Why should we not be partakers of this rejoicing ? France 
expended nearly a billion of dollars for our establishment. 
For that she burdened herself with taxation and debt. Her 
fiscal condition demanded a drastic review. Neckar, by his 
great report, sounded the tocsin for the assemblage of the 
"Three States General" at Versailles. That convocation was 
the first sign of the actual sovereignty of the French people. 
It was the beginning of their representative government. In- 
deed, it was the real beginning of the representative system in 
Europe. 

The States General assembled five days after the inaugura- 
tion of Washington. Its members were confronted with the 
profligacy of the court and the no])les. Its constituents were 



loaded with burdens wliicli the nobility and clergy escaped. 
From unrest to defiance, and from defiance to revolution, only 
one step ; from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock — one fatal 
step. The spark had been communicated from America, and 
the magazine exploded. For the first time since IGl-J: her 
parliament met. Her people, under the lead of Mirabeau and 
Sieyes, in their desperation throttled the monarchy, and under 
grievous provocation they reasserted their ancient rights. No 
obstructions, no compromises were permitted. The hapless 
Louis — "the son of sixty kings" — lost his head. 

These momentous events marched with expedition, and 
not without diguit}". The}^ were hardly interrupted by the 
blood shed on the 12th of July, or the demolition of the 
Bastile. The National Assembly, unlike our Continental 
Congress, became paramount for a time. It abolished feudal 
rights. It delcared for press-freedom and soul-liberty. On 
the 18th of August it repeated, in the " Declaration of the 
Rights of Man," the declaration penned by Thomas Jefferson. 

THE NATAL DAY OF FRANCE. 

Why did France choose the fifth of May for her celebration ? 
Why not ? That was the last day of the Bastile '? At one 
blow fell that instrument of arbitrary arrests under lettres de 
cachet and royal caprice and cruelty. As the ancient order of 
tyranny was typified in that hateful prison, so modern liberty 
revived with its overthrow. But the taper of liberty lighted 
from the torch in the New World v/as obscured soon by the 
Directory, and the excesses of '93, and totally hidden by the 
Empire of Bonaparte. 

The French declaration was the embodiment of our own. At 
every session of the National Assembly, as now in the Cham- 
ber of Deputies, American institutions were discussed, as 
almost their own, and their influences regarded. 

AMERICAN DEBT TO FRANCE. 

The diplomats, envoys and statesmen of France, and especi- 
ally Vergennes and Baumarchais, had been unremitting -in 
their efforts, and their money, in establishing our independ- 
ence. But for the stupidity of Congress, the French aid 
would have been more speedily successful, notwithstanding 
the calculating spirit which prevailed, to a large extent at 
that time, among a certain class of our people. We had a 
disaffection which was directed toward the overthrow of 
Washington and the breaking up of the combined French alli- 
ance. It aimed at a monarchical establishment. 

It may be asked : Was not France, then, a monarchy ? 
And how could she assist us? Was it from a genuine love of 
liberty ? 



8 

I answer : Slie gave us, beside money, generous ideas, even 
tliougli prompted by jealousy of England. France, along witli 
Spain, liad an old grudge against England. She bad been con- 
testing for tlie control of tlie new continent. 

As the recipient of her moneyed and diplomatic aid and the 
efforts of her brave sons who were with us to the end at York- 
town, why should we derogate from her by arrogating to our- 
selves ? The inhabitants of what was once French Louisiana, 
will not fail in gratitude to its early possessor ; nor in repub- 
lican sympathy, noAV that our well-tried friend is contemned 
by the monarchies of Europe. 

THE TWO REVOLUTIONS. 

Is it possible to make the comparison between the American 
and the French revolutions, unless we limit observation to 
the years 1789 and 1889 ? We may compare Mirabeau with 
Washington ; but Robespierre with Jefferson, or Dantou with 
Madison, never ! 

When the Bastile fell in 1789, France had all the agonies of 
an unsettled political condition. On the 30th of April, in the 
same year, Washington, amidst peace and prosperity and 
universal harmony, bowing his head before Chancellor Living- 
stone and kissed the sacred volume, as the consecration of his 
civic service to the Republic. From that time on, down to this 
I)resent jea.Y, which shines resplendent in this Northwestern 
land, — our Revolution has been a national, continental protest 
against the excesses of France, — and our progress since then, a 
Avorld-wide exemplar of the virtues of well-ordered freedom 
and representative government. 

Had France deferred less to the theories of Rousseau ; had 
she suppressed his prolocutor and apostle, — Robespierre, 
throttled her Jacobins and avoided her Reign of Terror ; had 
the bloody egotism and cowardice of the red Republicans been 
awed by the majestic strength and moderation of a Washington, 
the stains on the escutcheon of the first French Republic 
would not have been made "the horror of history." But 
would we have escaped them iinder like conditions of tyranny? 

France can to-day rejoice that her land system has been 
broadened ; and her peasant proprietors have had their titles 
confirmed. There is no trace of privilege or feudal quality left 
in her land tenure. The Bonapartes are reduced to their 
proper level in history, where despotisms of all kinds, whether 
Jacobin or imperial, find a dishonored grave. 

The inexcusable blunder of the Assembly was their precipi- 
tate action, based more upon philoso]ihy than experience. 
They endeavored to accomplish in a few weeks what should 
have been the legislative growth of a century. They did 
not study heedfully the nature of government, its practicalities, 



9 

and its properties aud powers."" As Lord Jeffre}' has said, 
" A child cannot be stretched out by engines to the stature of 
a man, or a man compelled in the morning to excel in all 
the exercises of an athlete." 

CENTENNIAL EVENTS. 

These great centennial events are worthy of celebration, 
joint and several. It matters little to the people of either 
country that profligate Kings and autocratic Emperors look 
askew upon such demonstrations. It matters little to France, 
and nothing to us, now that France has moderated her policies 
aud conformed her ])olity with our own, that she had to pass 
through the Eed Sea before she reached the Promised Land. 

INDEPENDENCE, UNION, AND LAND. 

It has been said by the historian of the Northwest, Mr. 
Hinsdale,t that next to independence and union the disposition 
of the Western Lands was the most important question that 
the old Congress had to deal with ; and they still bear no 
small part in their relation to our independence and union. 

Although it may be said that the plough and the land is a 
familiar figure in Fourth of July celebrations, these are of no 
avail if liberty be lacking. Their free use is the best founda- 
tion of freedom, and how to secure this was the problem to be 
solved by the American Congress in the period ante-dating as 
well as subsequent to the Constitution. 

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. , 

Those who were early associated with the disposition of the 
lands of the Northwest Territory, were impressed by the im- 
portance and difficulty of their management in the interest of 
frugal, speedy and fair settlement. If you study the early 
history of the Western Territories, you will be profoundly im- 
pressed by the wisdom and self-restraint that marked the first 
advancement of our settlements beyond the Appalachian chain 
toward the Mississippi and the Pacific. 

CESSIONS BY THE STATES. 

To understand rightly this relation, you must glance at the 
cessions that were made by the States of Virginia, New York, 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, of the Ohio Valley domain, 
which has brought such incalculable opulence to our country. 

* (Jeffrey's Essays, vol. 1. p. 555.) 
t Page 252 . 



10 

Chief Justice Chase, iu a sketch of the history of Ohio, pre- 
liminary to his history of its statutes, disre Guarded the claims 
of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York to the 
Nortliwestern lands. He believed that the claim of the United 
States was paramoiint by right of conquest, and that it was 
most rational and just. Before that title accrued the charter 
of Virginia had been judicially vacated. The grant had been 
resumed by the Crown. As Virginia had not remonstrated, 
was she not estopped ? Was not her claim.for the protection 
of the frontier only a claim upon the Treasury '? Coukl it con- 
fer title to the lands? The Avestern boundary of Connecticut 
had been so clearly defined in her agreement with New York, 
that her claims to territory beyond that line could not be con- 
sidered valid. The pretension of New York was as thoroughly 
refuted by geography as by the interests of the Six Nations. 
As for Massachusetts, her claim rested upon a charter granted 
at a period when France possessed and occupied the land. 
Was it not, therefore, a nullity ? The Chief Justice held, in 
opposition to these pretensions, that Congress, as the legis- 
lative head of the United States, which had rescued the 
vacant territory from the common enemy by the united arms 
and at the joint expense of all the States, should fix the 
superior title in the whole Union. This view has been 
challenged in court and in Congress, but it is now admitted 
as settled. 

It matters little to us now whether, originally, these claim- 
ant States or the United States had the better title to the lands 
of our western territory. At last these lands became the 
property of the Union by a series of generous cessions to and 
acceptances by Congress under honorable conditions. 

When the Constitution gave Congress the power to regulate 
the territory of the United States, that grant had within its 
purview only, the lands extending to the Mississippi river, 
excepting those portions reserved to Virginia in the southwest 
and to Connecticut and Virginia in the northwest for certain 
military bounties and purchases, like those of the Ohio Com- 
pany. 

FORMATION OF STATES. 

This generation cannot comprehend the force of the obstacles 
to the extension of sovereignty over, and to the actual settle- 
ment of the countr}^ between the Appalachian range and the 
Mississippi river. These obstacles were surmounted by wise 
foresight and liberal policies. Some of the State cessions are 
more significant than the tenure of the soil ; none more so 
than that which Mr. Jeflferson and his colleagues presented on 
behalf of Virginia. After reciting certain acts of Congress and 
of Virginia, and the report adopted by Congress on the 13th 
of September, 1783, which stipulated that the territory was 



11 

ceded, it fixed the eminent domain in the Federal government 
and gave it crystallization through wise political legislation. 
It ordained that the lands should be formed into States. These 
should contain a suitable area, not less than 100 nor more than 
150 miles square, or as near thereto as circumstances might 
admit ; and the States so formed should be distinct representa- 
tive States, and be admitted as members of the Federal Union,— 
each to have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and 
independence as the other States ! 

This was the first of the grand ideas in connection with the 
Northwest Territorj^ It marked the end of the long straggle 
between the Congress and Virginia. It also made a finality of 
the question as to the territory southwest of the Ohio which 
remained with Virginia. 

Jefi'erson's idea of a State of proper dimensions is significant 
to the people of Dakota, who were interested in its division. 
It gave much emphasis toward determining the voice and vote 
in fixiug the present division line between the Dakotas. All 
honor to Virginia for the political genius and prophetic sight 
of her statesmen ; for to her lasting renown be it said that 
Virginia was the only State making a cession, which stipulated 
that the territory ceded should be formed into free and equal 
commonwealths ! Her theory would give from ten to twenty 
States in the then northwest territory instead of the present 
number. But in 1788 Virginia consented to a modification 
which would admit of not more than five nor less than three 
States. Ohio, Indiana and Illinois became these three States. 
To these were afterwards added Michigan and Wisconsin. 

TIJE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 

Our land policy did not stop at the northwest and south- 
west territory. Our eager pioneers rediscovered only to bound 
over the Mississippi. In the language of Webster, they found 
empires held in solution in its yellow waters. 

AFTER THE CONSTITUTION. 

The next significant movement for the enlargement of our 
territory was the annexation of Louisiana, fourteen years after 
the Constitution had been adopted. The preliminary contest 
for the possession of the vast territory between the Mississippi 
and the Pacific would require a more elaborate discussion than 
the hour aftbrds. The marks of French possession are per- 
j)etuated in the names of States, towns and waters from New 
Orleans to Saulte Ste. Marie. In vain His Britannic Majesty of 
England, and His most Christian Majesty of France, sought 
to fix irrevocably the boundary between Louisiana and the 
British possessions on the left and right of the Mississippi. 
In vain their adventurous subjects, with diflerent laws, relig- 



12 

ions and customs, sought to conciliate the aborigines and 
make these hinds permanently attractive to their several and 
peculiar immigrations. 

The British population seemed to have had a larger colonial 
and staying capacity, and, therefore, France lost and Great 
Britain gained. 

In the seventeenth century, Spain had quietly allowed 
France to take possession of the Mississippi river and the 
western half of the great valley, together with the exclusive 
possession of its mouth. Through various treaties and accom- 
modations, and with great lack of foresight on our part, it was 
graciously arranged that the United States might enjoy the 
free navigation of the Mississip]n into and from the sea. It 
is enough to know that by the operation of war and diplomacy 
Louisiana was ceded to the United States on April 30th, 1803, 
and that we succeeded to all the rights, respecting Louisiana, 
which belonged to both Spain and France. 

This magnificent cession carried us West of the Mississippi, 
and North to the British possessions. But it was not until 
1818, that the United States and England established a 
boundary between their territory on the north to the Eocky 
mountains ; and not until later that the rest of the delimita- 
tion was completed. 

FORESIGHT OF JEFFERSON. 

We often praise the genius and patriotism of Jefferson for 
his draft of the great Declaration ; but his purchase of Louis- 
iana is a more conspicuous mark of his foresight and states- 
manship. 

In April, 1802, he wrote to our minister at Paris : " There is 
on the globe but one single spot, the possessor of which is 
■our natural, habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through 
which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass 
to market, and from its fertility, it will ere long yield more 
than one-half of our produce and contain more than half of 
our inhabitants." He insisted that the occlusion of the Missis- 
sippi should cease ; that there should be no delay as to our 
course; that we should not hesitate one moment; that we 
should hazard our existence for the maintenance of our 
rights. 

The growth of population was so rapid at that time on what 
were called the "Western waters," and dependence upon the 
Mississippi was so great to over one-half million of our 
people at the beginning of the century — that we looked despe- 
rately to the mouth of' the Mississippi for egress to the sea. 
At that time, of course, the Missouri valley was not so much 
in contemplation. The vast lands of Dakota and westward, 
far oflf to the mountain ranges of Montana, Idaho and Wash- 



13 

ingtou, overlooking the Pacific, were hardly tlieu viewed, unless 
by the prophetic eye of the Seer of Monticello. 

THE WISDOM OF THE PURCHASE. 

The wisdom of the piirchase led to a reconciliation with 
Spain, for that jealous power was in actual possession of 
Louisiana when the treaty was signed, although it had been 
legally transferred by Sj^ain to France. 

Some of our contemporary writers have imagined what 
Washington would now think of the progress of the greater 
West. Although he had an idea of the vastness of our imperial 
future ; and although he traveled to the Ohio valley and pro- 
jected water connections between the Atlantic and the Ohio 
river,^ — the development of the westernmost West, could he see 
it to-day, would confound his ken, give additional tremor to his 
compass, and astound his most extravagant fancy. 

He was, in many Avays, first in war, first in peace, first in the 
hearts of his countrymen ; but his foresight as to our domain 
was limited by the Ohio river, or at most to the territory east 
of the Mississippi. It is Thomas Jefi'erson who was first, and 
will forever remain first, as the statesman and artificer of that 
policy which comprehended the lands between the Mississippi 
and the Pacific. His vision was not blinded by the beauty 
and richness of the Yirginia and Ohio valleys. It rev- 
elled in the tilth and wealth of ages unborn, beyond 
the wildest dreams of the planters of the Atlantic coast. 
Besides, he made a practical provision as well as economic 
prevision as to the details of our lands and their settlement. 
His plan comprehended their division by townships, sections 
and quarter sections, and their sale to the settler.* 

The Great West was to him more than a land for homes and 
farms and states. It was a charm, like an inspiration — 

" Paradise and groves 
Elysian Fortunate Fields — like those of old 
SoiTght in the Atlantic main " 

NATURAL RIGHTS OF MAN. 

As the institutions which Jefferson assisted to unfold were 
the result of experience, and as that experience was inspired by 

* " This plan of Jefferson's is still preserved in the catioDal archives," says 
Mr. Bancroft, " in his own handwriting, and is as completely his own work as 
the Declaration of Independence. " 

(Bancroft's History of the Constitiition vol. 1, p. 154.) 

Bancroft remarks that " this land ordinance as amended from 1784 to 1788, 
definitively settled the character of the national land lawn, which are still 
treasured np as one of the most precious heritages from the founders of the 
Kepublic." 

"The customary loose locations of land were yielded, the bounds of each 
parcel were fixed ; the mode of registry costless and simple and the form of 
conveyance concise and clear . Never was land offered to a poor man at less 
cost or with a safer title." 

(History of the Constitution, vol. 1, p. 182.) 



14 

the natural rights of mankind, he foresaw in clear dream and 
solemn vision the social and political conditions of his own 
time, and blazed out a path for its future greatness and ad- 
vancement. Although his ideas in the Declaration were 
abstract, they had the qualities of incentive, expansion, and 
adaptability for every future urgency and emergency of the 
ive]iublic. 

OUR CIVIL WAR AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The question whether the Mississippi should flow from its 
remotest sources in the mountains through an alien country, 
was involved in oiir civil war. It was thought by the South 
at the beginning of that war, that rather than lose the Missis- 
sippi and its outlet, the Northwest would cleave to the South 
and part company with the East. What a delusion ! And 
Avhat a contest was that for the Mississippi. Thanks to Farra- 
gut and his wooden ships and iron men — it Avas a contest — 
whose ordeal settled forever the integrity of the valley and as 
a consequence — of the Union. That contest was closed forever 
by the death of the Confederac}'. 

Mr. Lincoln said, in August, 1863, that " the Father of Waters 
again runs unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North- 
west ! Yet, not wholly to them. New England, the ' Key- 
stone ' and New Jersey have helped to hew our way right and 
left— to the Gulf." 

Doubtless, there are many veterans here in this remote land 
— which the main source of this great artery traverses — who 
did their patriotic part in making good the words of Lincoln. 
They made durable our possession of the Mississippi from its 
Itasca springs in Minnesota, and its mountain rivulets in 
Montana and Wyoming, to the Deltas and Bayous in the Sunny 
South. 

The Mississippi once ours, partition became as impossible 
as the separation of ^.olor from the rainbow. Ever}^ drop of 
water that oozes from the little fountains of its smallest 
tributaries, holds in its crystal purity, the seven-hued covenant 
of Union. Every freshet of the Missouri, that brings down 
in solution W^ebster's empire of free soil ; every confluent from 
New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana 
and Illinois, and from the country below as well as above the 
Missouri — all the vast alluvial bottoms of the 35,000 tributaries 
which produce that trinity in the wealth of nations — cattle, 
corn and cotton — are eternal pledges of the fldelity of the 
people Avho produce and live b}' these riparian bounties, to 
the integrity of our imperial covenant. 

Thus out of the philosophic forecast of Jefferson, illuminated 
in the missal of Independence, bound up with the jewelled 
clasp of the Ordinance of 1787, which dedicated the northwest 



15 

to freedom forever; out of the vellum, vital with law and 
liberty, upon which the established order was inscribed ; out 
of the cessions of the elder States, under wise and generous 
conditions ; out of the legislation of Congress in this wonder- 
ful Centennial year, by which the once remote Missouri 
domain is apparelled for stately independence ; out of the 
sources of prescriptive and imprescriptible rights ; na}-, out of 
the very divine origin of all law— God himself, has leaped 
other new States— each panoplied, like another Minerva, for 
defense, yet bearing the olive as a type of wisdom and good 
will. 

Ubere glebae atque potens armis ! 
DEDICATION OF LAND TO SETTLEKS. 

If our ancestors made institutions based on the broad doc- 
trine of Federal domain and State equality, they did not 
anticipate that entire relief and comfort which are the result 
of the later acts as to the land in all their amplitude as we 
enjoy them. In nothing more striking has this been exem- 
plified than in the homestead dedication of the public land. 

In my early service as a legislator, I voted for the homestead 
law. It was an experiment and a departure. It may or may 
not interest you to know that I drew my reason for tliat vote 
out of ''An Imaginarj^ Commonwealth," by James Harrington, 
and dedicated to no less a personage than His Highness " The 
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and 
Ireland." The dedication was a satire, for at that time Oliver 
Cromwell was engaged in pulling on a velvet glove over 
his iron hand to despoil the land from its tillers 

In the "Introduction" to that work, the author speaks in 
praise of farms and houses of husbandry. He would maintain 
farming with " such a proportion of land as may breed a 
subject to live in couAenient plenty and no servile condition, 
and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners and not 
mere hirelings." And thus he would bring it about " that 
every poll would be fit for a helmet, so that there would be a 
great population and much strength ; for where the Common- 
wealth consists of a country with a plough in the hands of the 
owner, there is produced its most innocent and steady 
genius."'" 

In pursuing this policy I never voted to give a dollar or an 
acre to corporations ; I feared that it would make them in 
time " running sores." I was not a trustee to encumber 
the treasury or to despoil the settler of his heritage. I be- 
lieved that the rifle which fought the Indian and the ' hardship 
of pioneer life might properly go hand in hand with the 



* Introduction to Harrington's Oceana. Dublin Edition, A. D , 1699 
pp. 34-5. 



16 

theodolite and compass wliicli squared the sections and the 
policy which saved them for the plough. 

SECTIONS FOR EDUCATION. 

While on the one hand we give to the pioneer a recompense 
for his vigilance and energy, we dedicate for educational pur- 
poses, a portion of the lands in our budding commonwealths. 
It was a good promise of our future that a land surveyor like 
Washington blazed his way through the western wilderness of 
Virginia to the Ohio . It was a better promise, when speak- 
ing of the settlers of my native valley, having in view the 
ordinance of 1787, he said : " No colony in America was ever 
settled under such favorable auspices as that which has Just 
commenced at the Muskingum." And why? Because by the 
ordinance of 1887, " Religion, morality and education being- 
necessary to good government antl the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall be forever encour- 
aged." 

It has been well said by a great teacher, that " Education is 
a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can 
destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism enslave. At 
home, a friend ; atjroad, an introduction ; in solitude a solace, 
and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, 
it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, 
what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage." 

With these advantages in mind, the Continental Congress on 
the 20tli May, 1785, in ordaining the proper mode of disposing 
lands in the Western Territory, began the system, ever since 
pursued. It reserved section number 16 of every township for 
the maintenance of public schools. That ordinance was re-en- 
acted by the Federal Congress on the 26th March, 1804 ; and, 
as the States of the northwest came in, it was applied to 
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, In fact, it became a part of the 
fundamental law of these States. It will never be abrogated as 
to future States. It was enlarged by other enactments of Con- 
gress and the States. Since 1848, two sections in every 
township, sixteen and thirty-six, have been given to each 
incoming state and territory. 

These gratuities have been sedulously guarded in their appli- 
cation to the new States admitted during the present year. 
They are a splendid endowment. Such a benefaction virtually 
says to the States : " If you Avould enjoy your rights and liber- 
ties, if you would have security and protection, if you would 
perpetuate your institutions, you must be both enlightened 
and virtuous." In the language of the preamble for the 
establishment of free schools in Illinois in 1825, there is this 
emphatic and thoughtful response : " As the mind of every 
citizen in the Republic is the common property of society and 



17 

constitutes a basis of its strength and happiness, it is, there- 
fore, tlie peculiar duty of a free government to encourage and 
extend the improvement and cultivation of the energies of the 
whole people." 

SCHOOL LANDS. 

In this spirit, Dakota and her Sisters of the Northwest accept 
the enabling Acts and their accompanying largess of land 
from Congress. Each of you covenants with the Federal Gov- 
ernment that Education shall be maintained and the com- 
mon school system never ujjrooted. 

Not merely sections sixteen and thirty-six, but every particle 
of your rich soil — reservations included — will in time, be 
utilized, as well for the markets of the world, as for that cause 
of education by which your internal policy and future glory 
will be safe-guarded. 

In all that makes up educational and moral elevation, your 
schools and churches are fulfilling the promise of your rich 
endowments, reckoned at twenty-five millions of dollars. 
Congress has granted you a treasure which will be equal to 
tliat of any other State except Texas, whose schools? are 
founded solely on State endowment. 

A former Governor of Dakota, William A. Howard, with 
whom I served many years in Congress, in one of his messa- 
ges sets forth the advantages of your great school fund : " If 
no sacrilegious hand," said he, " shall be permitted to squan- 
der any portion of this rich inheritance, Dakota will have a 
population second to no State for intelligence and virtue." 
His anathema speaks from the grave with no uncertain utter- 
ance. In the long vistas of time, it will stand as a guard 
against any infringement upon that sacred trust. 

PHYSICAL FEATUEES OF OUR NEW STATES. 

Other States may have more phenomenal physical scenery ; 
other States may boast of greater natural advantages ; but no 
States will ever surpass either of the future Dakotas in that 
charm which surrounds a region of quiet and lovely homes, 
adorned with the graces of education and religion. 

Contend as you may for railroad routes ; struggle as you 
will for State capitals or county seats. Make your compe- 
tition honorable and energetic for geographical, commercial 
or industrial centers and advantages. But, my friends, one 
thing the friends of the Dakotas, Montana and Washington 
demand, and that is, that your enactments for free schools 
and public enlightenment, shall be as sacred as your guaran- 
tees for personal and public liberty. 



18 



EMINENT DOMAIN. 



Recent events in the " Indian Territory " show how impor- 
tant and advantageons to the settler is a fair start and an equal 
right to secure a portion of the public lands. That govern- 
ment would be, indeed, derelict which would allow either a 
violation of treaty or violation of law to gratify an excessive 
appetite for land. Under the recent provisions relating to the 
unoccupied and reserved lands of Dakota, it is to be hoped 
that the settlement and growth of your new State may not be 
hindered, but enhanced ; and that every portion of the soil 
within your limits may be occupied under conditions of good 
faith tow^ard the red man, and fair play toward the w^hite. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that the settlements on 
both sides of the Missouri Eiver, amid every possible disaster 
of drought, fire, tempest, savagery, treachery and warfare, 
were each and all made by the energy of white men. By your 
oAvn rare energy, within eighteen years, the yield of civilized 
industry has risen there to fabulous proportions. It is, there- 
fore, hardly a problem for social science to solve, whether these 
lands should be held by races who cannot or wall not work 
them at all, or if at all, not advantageously, while the eager 
and diligent white race is only too ready to test the fullest 
capacity of your peerless soil by the alchemy of sun, water, 
plough and civilization. Vattel confirms the superior title to 
the soil in the civilized man who will till it. 

FAIE PLAY IN THE SETTLEMENT OF LAND. 

The wisdom which acquired the vast territory west of the 
Mississippi was not entirely heedful in providing special modes 
for its settlement. 

Am I asked : why the Indian titles to an immense area in 
Dakota are not extinguished ? 

I answer : The negotiations are progressing, or will progress 
happily, and the recent experience at Oklahoma will be utilized. 
Oklahoma had less than tw^o millions of acres. The Sioux 
reserve, about to be brought into market, has over five times 
that area. The pressure of immigration has proceeded and 
will proceed orderly, and the homestead, pre-emption and 
other laws will be adequate. 

To Senator Dawes, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Chairman 
Peele, of Arkansas, are due thanks for that Congressional 
action by which, hand in hand with your accession to the 
Union, your State is to be blessed with the accession of a grand 
area of territory, and future generations benefited by its 
opening to the homestead and the plough. 

THE EESEEVATIONS. 

Volumes have been written of the history of the many 
tribes of the Sioux, which are now limited to their present reser- 



19 

vatious. It must be remembered that these tribes, not loug 
since, owned the lauds, and swept over the whole country of 
Minnesota and Dakota. Their history, as we have it in 
French tradition, begins and is co-eval with the English revo- 
lution of 1640. It comprehends the perpetual warfare among 
the tribes, the trading adventures, our own treaties which have 
been made and broken since the first was made with them, 
on the 19th of July, 1815, and all the remarkable incidents 
connected Avith your later annals of Dakota, and with which 
you are familiar. The later accounts begin with the discovery 
of gold in the Black Hills. They record the struggle for su- 
premacy between the indigenes and the immigrants. They com- 
prehend the heroism of Custer and his gallant Seventh Cavalry, 
and the gallantry of Sibley, Surry, Terry and others in many 
blood}' conflicts. The effort so often repeated by civilization 
was ended, after the method of the ancient Hebrews, who con- 
quered and held the promised aboriginal land. Fate may be 
hard upon the savage occupants ; but after all, under the laws 
of evolution and of Congress, the superior civilization when 
encountering the inferior must succeed. It is inevitable 
that the superior must encompass, control, absorb, and in the 
end, civilize and elevate the weaker race. It is the philosophy 
of the history of social advancement, under the Divine order ; 
it is for us to apply it in the true spirit of humanity. 

THE MUTABILITY OF INSTITUTIONS. 

Our own age proves the mutability of the most imperial of 
institutions. Their changes are links in the endless chain of 
Providence ; and, to a philosophic observer, they move by a 
law as fixed as that which makes the decay of Autumn the 
herald of Spring. They come by the same law which controls 
the constellations in their endless courses. The records of 
territorial espansion and contraction, with the movements and 
changes of races, will likewise ever go on. The aborigines of 
the American continent are not exempt from the influences of 
the guiding star of progress. 

While manufactures, commerce, the arts and intermediary 
elements of civilized society may be hailed to encourage and 
elevate — that race is richest, proudest, most permanent, most 
Republican and most Democratic which has had leaders such as 
Washington, who were racy of the soil and whose domestic 
sentiments were associated with the fruits of the earth. 

SCPEEIOK civilization; — THE rOUNDATION OF OUR GREATNESS. 

The greatness of this country is based on the broad founda- 
tion of our ]3ublic land. T\"e look askance at a landed aris- 
tocracy ; we distrust alien control ; we dislike nominal occu- 
pancy; we tolerate no reserved or laggard indifference to its 



20 

permanent utilization, nor the removal of tlie toiler. This is no 
new idea. It is based on Holy Writ itself. It was never more 
prevalent than now in the movement of all nations who have 
risen in greatness whether by the subjngation and weakness of 
alien races or better methods. It must hereafter, be accompanied 
by justice to the weaker race, and always ensure a fair tenure 
to the actual tillers of the land. If the United States have 
failed in some notable instances in these requirements — the 
general drift of our polic}^ toward the aboriginal occupants 
has been far in advance of any other nation. 

THE SIOUX INDIANS. 

It is not to be understood that the Sioux and the tribes 
here, are lacking in a sort of speculative smartness, inspired 
and aided by benevolent advice. The Federal Government 
has not had to deal, of late years, with Indians who had no 
sagacity for a trade, and no appreciation of soil. On the con- 
trary, although never tilling the soil, they are ever read}^ for 
quieting such title as the whites have acquired, — for a con- 
sideration. Since the bloody Sioux warfare of 1862, in 
Minnesota and Dakota, subsequent events, indicate that at last 
a system has been adopted by which the Indian titles may be 
peacefully acquired, and the valleys, so rich and fruitful, on 
the west side of the Missouri and elsewhere may, in good 
faith, without harm to the red man and with advantage to 
the white man, be rescued from their present useless con- 
dition, for the higher economics of cultivated life. 

The people of South Dakota, in which lies the largest reser- 
vation, — 56,000 square miles, as large as Michigan, — are to be 
congratulated. They will soon have an amicable ending of the 
conferences, and an increase of immigration in consequence of 
the calm, clear, sagacious policy which has obtained with re- 
spect to their domain. 

LOVE OF LAND. 

You cannot eradicate from the American the love of land. 
By the laws of heredity there is an instinct for the dignity of 
possessing the soil. This fact is attested, whether by the 
holders of the poorest soeter in Norway, or the minutest 
tracklet in Picardy or Prussia, the biggest bonanza farms of 
North Dakota, the lordly acres of Scotland and Hungary, or 
the cattle ranches of Wyoming, Texas and Colorado. It is 
exaggerated in the American. He combines in himself the 
avariciousness for acres of all the races. You may say that 
the Mexican is an exception. Some one has said, looking at 
the slovenly bodies of the peon, that the soil is more attached 
to him than he to the soil. This may be true, for soap is a 
legal tender and a medium of exchange in some parts of Mex- 



21 

ico, it so precious and scarce. Tlie Sioux also, thougli a 
nomad, has a like attachment to the soil, which is said to be 
mutual ; though dissolved — only at long intervals — by a sup- 
posititious bath ! Mrs. Custer relates this fact of one of the 
tribe, but she adds that he took the bath by the agency of 
his wife — -fadt per alium facit jjer se. 

■ Captain Clark, in his description of the aborigines whom 
lie found upon the Upper Missouri in 1508, records one of 
their customs : They struck their weapon on the earth three 
times, and, like the old lady, swore by the "land's sake." 
Their reluctance to part with their lands, although using them 
only as hunting grounds, indicates something of the spirit of 
their ancestors and their nomadic congeners in Asia. 

EARLY TURKISH LAND TENURES. 

If I may draw an illustration from the Orient, and more par- 
ticularly from the history of the founder of Turkish power, I 
would commend a study of the sturdy herdsman who came 
out of the heart of Asia and for many centuries held the world 
in thrall. It was not by the Koran, not by the cimeter, not by 
the virtues that distinguished them that the Byzantine empire 
fell before them, and that the ancient lands of the Greek and 
Armenian Christians were occupied and controlled by the 
descendants of Othman. Their land laws gave impetus 
to the amazing rapidity with which the Seljukian Turk became 
absolute master of the East, e\en up to the gates of Vienna. 
If history be read aright, it will be found that the attractive 
force by which the Turkish empire was enlarged and welded, 
was the equity and moderation with which the Suzerain lord 
treated alike l3otli Mussulman and Christian ; and, especially 
with reference to tlie liberal tenure of land by which when the 
crop was sown the harvest was assured to the tiller. 

Chivalrous heroism and inexorable justice marked the 
career of that power which founded a stupendous dynasty 
from a few horsemen and warriors beyond the Caspian. The 
head of that dynasty, when he died, left neither gold nor 
silver — only a salt cellar, an embroidered caftan, a new turban 
and a flag ; and as a sign of his love of the land, a yoke of oxen 
and some horses and sheep of the choice stock which still pas- 
ture at the foot of Mount Olympus, near the ancient capital of 
Broussa. 

SORVIYAL OF THE FITTEST. 

Those nations have survived the longest where the State 
regarded agriculture and a just tenure of land. When Sir 
Thomas Moore conceived his Utopia, he allowed no person 
to be a citizen who was ignorant of farming ; they partly 
learned it at school and partly by practice. His ideal was 
founded on real estate. ' 



22 

The Prince of that ideal realm is described as a man who 
never aspired to an office, for, in that case, he was sure never 
to compass it. Let the Sovereign American make a note of 
this. The people paid all the marks of honor the more freely 
because none were exacted of them. They were simple in their 
habits and had no distinction either of garment or of crown. 
The ruler was only distinguished by a sheaf of corn which he 
carried before him ! 

In that ideal commonwealth, thus organized, every man 
sought to build up not his own wealth, but the Avealth of others. 
Its citizens believed that in pursuing the public good they 
were showered with individual blessings ; and they made, as in 
the " New Atlantis," their chief symbol of honor, a jewel in the 
figure of an ear of wheat ! Truly, a vision of your own 
Dakota! 

It may not be inappropriate for me to refer to some obser- 
vations of the Orient, where I sojourned for a time ; for the 
early lessons of Ottoman rule are now reversed. The mode 
of burdening farms with taxes renders it difficult there to cul- 
tivate the soil. The Ottoman empire is a suggestive antithesis 
of our own land. Its peasants are harrowed, instead of the 
soil. The best intentions of a good ruler fail to give content- 
ment and happiness to an industrious and hospitable people. 

OUR DEBT TO THE OEIENT PAID. 

Our Constitution is so elastic, our ideas so expansive, and our 
Government is so fittingly moulded, that the contrast with this 
Ottoman exhibit is a recurrent reminder of the worthlessness of 
despotic control and the worthiness of liberal institutions. If 
the East be the land of religious faith, ours is the land of 
physical forces. The faith we have adopted and the forces we 
have applied by mechanic invention ; or as it has been well 
sung by the poet : 

Sceptres and thrones the morning realms have tried ; 
Earth for the people kej)t her sunset side. 
Arts, manners, creeds, the teeming Orient gave ; 
Freedom, the gift that freights the refluent wave, 
Pays with one priceless jiearl the guerdon due. 
And leaves the Old World debtor to the New. 

So that whatever obligation mankind may owe to the East 
for its Braliamic, Hebraic and Christian religions, and for the 
art, law and literature which made Egypt, Judea, Greece and 
Rome the soul of the ancient world, the West, through 
America, has more than discharged the debt ; and as time 
elapses it will roll up a vast surplus, which its people will 
heedfuUy and happily distribute. 



23 

A CENTURY OF NATIONAL GROWTH. 

I am not a praiser of the time that has passed. A thousand 
appliances which art, science and humanity give for our 
guidance, reveal the fact that we possess all that makes up 
a well-ec[uipped commonwealth and a social order, better 
than anything ever known in history. 

The people who settled the Northwest Territory — Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois — had not your advantages. They roughed it 
with fever and ague, quinine and whiskey, log cabins, frontier 
wars and domestic deprivations. In our time, that avatar of 
the new civilization — the locomotive — pioneers the way, and 
emigration follows ; so that in j'our own territory you have 
every day an example of the advanced condition of our whole 
country and our living present, as distinguished from the dead 
past of a hundred years ago. 

Jefferson's ideas. 

My friends, the institutions based upon the Eepublican 
ideas which Jeflferson taught, not alone in the Declaration and 
in the Ordinances which he championed, but by his majestic 
faith in humanity, give emphasis to this celebration. I have 
said that we cannot too highly praise his philosophic foresight 
in looking beyond the Appalachian chain which in his day 
hemmed in the original colonies, to the banks of the Missis- 
sippi — and even beyond that mighty river — so that future gen- 
erations might breathe a more exhilarating atmosphere, and 
our freedom have a Avider and purer azure as the dome of a 
magnificent future. 

PHYSICAL AND AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. 

Physical progress and the application of steam and other 
motors upon sea and land have made transportation and immi- 
gration easier. Immigrants arrive at Castle Garden at the 
rate of eighteen knots an liour. The food supply of 
the world has not only been greatly increased in the ratio of 
population, but better distributed ; and no other country shows 
so well in this regard as our own. The annual income from 
agriculture in the United States was estimated by the present 
Superintendent of the Census, in 1880, at three billions of 
dollars. In this revenue we still lead every nation of the world. 
In forest wealth, in the precious metals, in iron and steel, in 
manufactures of all kinds, the present decade has been the 
great progressive epoch of our historj'. 

CORN. 

It is impossible on an occasion like this to show the jDoetic 
and columnal grandeur of your fields of grain, the product of 
sky, soil and rain. From one object we can learn all. Take 



24 

tjorn as the object-lesson — the representative American 
product. It will also furnish its tasseled beauty and pjolden 
utilities for art, commerce and economy. There are plumes 
as well as ears in the battalions of maize in your peaceful 
fields. But we must return to statistics — to figures of arith- 
metic, not rhetoric, to show the benefactions of corn land, not 
only to our own but to alien peoples. 

Last year our corn crop w^as two billions of bushels. 
It was raised upon 75,672,763 acres. It w^ould require three 
millions of cars with over sixty thousand locomotives in a 
train to draw^ it to the seaboard. It would take a year to pass 
such a train through Chicago. 

Talk of your. corn palaces! Why, such a procession of corn 
cars belts the globe. After leaving seed for many millions of 
acres, our last year crop gives to each inhabitant thirty 
bushels ! I am not here to say how he consumes it ; w-hether 
in the solid or liquid state, wdiether roasted on the ear, or 
taken in pork. But one tlinig remains to be considered, and 
that is, that onl}' four per cent, of this immense crop reaches 
a foreign market ! The subtle chemistry which makes out of 
our rich loam and smiling fields, food for man and fodder 
for cattle, fails of its perfect purpose, unless our market is 
enlarged so as to give the farmer his merited reward, and so 
as to prevent tlie product from rotting in the rows, becoming a 
drug on our market, or being burnt for fuel. 

OUE PEAIRIE TERRITOKY. 

Nowhere liacs advance been more conspicuous than over the 
great plains of the West, including the new States. 

Especially is this evinced by the statistics connected with 
the ten prairie States and the Territories. Their popula- 
tion has leaped up from fifty-one thousand in 1800, to twent}^ 
millions in 1880, and to this will be added, in 1890, an increase 
of over fifty per cent ! 

Great as was the anticipation of Jeflerson when he acquired 
Louisiana, great as was the hope of those who explored our 
Territories nearly a century ago, no one at that time could sur- 
mise, much less anticipate, the great extent and value of the 
heritage to which w^e were born. As well might Captain Clark 
wdien hovering in sight of the Black Hills, and reaclnDg out 
and following with his mind the streams that came from them 
to irrigate the plain, have guessed that there would be taken 
out of those hills, thirty millions of precious metals in a decade. 
Who could have dreamed in 1800 that these, then uncultured 
lands of the West, now^ known as the "Prairie States," would 
produce in 1880, 326,000,000 bushels of wheat out of the 
460,000,000 raised in the United States that year ? Who could 
have then anticipated the great influx of immigration, the 



25 

enlargement of commercial facilities, the inventions of mechan- 
ism, the prosperity of all classes, and, especially, our extra- 
ordinary agricultural progress since the beginning of the cen- 
tury ? Who could have believed that our educational sj'stems, 
with their largesses from the treasuries of the States and the 
lands of the Federal Government, should have been so prized 
and nurtured as adjuncts of civilization? Who could liave 
imagined that so soon the hardships of the pioneer, the 
dangers from Indian massacre, and the difficulties of breaking 
up the vast prairies and of building convenient roads for the 
wagon and the horse, would be obviated, and that so soon your 
harvest would be golden and your civilization fill the highest 
aims of domestic comfort and intellectual progress ? 

WATER. 

Nor should it be forgotten, in this review, that the Federal 
Government is looking beyond the fruitful valleys and prairies 
of the West to those arid plains where the water, through irri- 
gation, may be made to fructify the soil. Could Jefferson have 
dreamed that this charm of water over soil would so soon be 
in the scope of Federal legislation or that Federal legislation 
Avould direct the clouds and their rainfalls? 

Not less indispensable for husbandry than the soil and the 
sun is the water. Older than the pyramids is the art of con- 
structing conduits. In Egypt, Judea, Mesopotamia, Persia, 
India and China, we find the signs of that immemorial custom 
which makes the appropriation of water for irrigation para- 
mount. Ancient America took the lead in her aqueducts. Even 
superior to the riparian rights of the common law, because of 
higher antiquity, and for the highest reason and the most 
beneficent results, — is the doctrine now universally approved 
by the courts and born even of the common law of moist little 
Britain, viz : that all right in water of non-navigable streams, 
must be subservient to tillage. The laws of Congress apply 
this doctrine to the public domain, and the courts interpret 
it rigidly in the interest of arable and irrigable lands. 

ADVANCEMENT OF DAKOTA. 

This concerns the local material growth in your own 
charming A'alley and prospering territory. 

Ten years ago, the present Superintendent of the Census, 
Hon. Robert P. Porter, said that " We might expect that the 
magnificent water power and the rich soil of southeastern Dakota 
will form a strong agricultural and manufacturing State." But in 
his wildest dreams,this accomplished economist could not have 
surmised that the Dakota of 1860 which had a cereal product 
of about 25,000 bushels, and in 1870 of about 422,000, and in 
1880 of over 7,000,000, would leap up in the past year to the 



26 

enormous quantity of 53,000,000 bushels of wheat, 21,000,000 
bushels of corn, and 37,000,000 bushels of oats, not to speak of 
potatoes, rye, barley, hay, etc., which the last taxation from 
the Agricultural Department reveals.* Sanguine observers 
prophecy that your wheat crop this year will reach 85 millions 
of bushels. The conditions are favorable and we are read}^ 
for anything to make bread plentifvil ! These figures may be 
cold to the eye of economy, but they have epic grandeur when 
you associate with them the inspiring majesty of the moun- 
tains, the magnificent breadth of the plains, the opulence of 
the mines, the grandeur of the forests, and the sublime growth 
and glory of new communities conquering the rigor of nature 
and renewing the vigor of national growth and State independ- 
ence, by contact with the earth, — which has always been to in- 
dustry a generous mother. 

What an immense area is yet to be filled by an industrious 
population ! Were your Territory as densely settled as Hol- 
land, it would contain nearly half the present population of 
the United States. 

There is nothing in all the marvels of the wonderful census 
concerning our decennial or centennial growth, which can equal 
that of your own territory. It is impossible on an occasion of 

* To-day there are in Dakota 250,000 horses, 250,000 milch cows, 800,000 
cattle, 230,000 sheep, 600,000 hogs. They are worth $50,000,000, and to this 
grand fortune a 10 per cent, accretion miist be added every year. At this mo- 
jnent a harvtst is growing, with every promise of happy realization, of 35,000,000 
bushels of corn, 70,000,000 of wheat,' 5,000,000 of flax, 10,000,000 of barley, 50,- 
000,000 of oats and 5,000,000 of potatoes ! And of the imperial domain stretch- 
ing from a a central point 200 miles north, east, south and west of the 96,000,000 
acres that constitute these States, barely 7,000,000— less than one-thirteenth — 
have felt the harrow's touch! Everywhere, in social life, in religious life, in 
political life, a perfect and liberal organization exists. Wherever there is a 
settlement the sjjires of half a dozen churches rise and the bells of half a dozen 
schools sound out. Crime is scarcelj^ heard of in Dakota. It has nothing that 
even faintly resembles a criminal class. There are but two prisons in the (wo 
States that really look like prisons, and the inmates of these are only luckless 
creatures who couldn't make things go, and did a little pilfering to keep the wolf 
ofl!. I suppose you think this sounds like a fairy tale ? Well, I think so my- 
self, but it is all the truth —i E. Q., Correspondent N. Y. Tribune, Jane 8, 
1889. 



27 



this kind to be very minute or elaborate in illustration of this 
assertion.* 

ETCHINGS OF PIONEER HISTORY. 

You have had many vicissitudes since the original purchase ; 
first, as a portion of the old Missouri territory ; then with a 
separate organization in 1861, along with Wyoming and a por- 
tion of Montana ; then in 1863, when Montana was separated 
from you and formed the original Territory of Idaho, and then, 
in 1868, when Wyoming was formed, cutting Dakota down to its 
present broad limits. 

Afterwards exploring expeditions were sent to the Black 
Hills and maj)ped the country. General Custer's reports of 



AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS OF DAKOTA, MONTANA AND WASH- 
INGTON TERRITORIES FOR 1887-8. 
From the Agricultural Department, June 4, 1889. 



Products. 


Quantity 
produced 
in 1887. 


Average 

yield 
pr. acre. 


Number of Value pr 
acres in each unit of 
crop . quantitj' 


Total 
valuation . 


DAKOTA. 

Indian corn, .bushels. 

Wheat do 

Rye do 

Oats do 

Barley do 

Buckwheat . . do 

Potatoes do 

Hay tons . 


20,992 000 

52,406,000 

218,000 

37,266,0 '0 

4,154,000 

63.000 

5,209,000 

607,750 


33.0 
14.3 
13.0 
31.4 
1H.3 
14.5 
105.0 
1.3 


636,120 

3,664,737 

16,750 

1,186,800 

227,000 

4,350 

49,008 

467,500 


$0 35 
52 
43 
25 
40 
57 
43 
4 06 


S7. 347, 200 

27,251,120 

93,740 

6,316,500 

1,661,600 

35,910 

2,239,870 

2,467,465 


Totals 







6,252,865 




$50 413 405 










MONTANA. 
Indian corn . . bushels 

Wheat do 

Oats do 

Barley do 

Potatoes do 

Hay tons 


25,000 

1,760,000 

1,866,000 

78,000 

491,000 

236,009 


27.5 
18.0 
31.0 
22.6 
110.0 
1.3 


908 

97,786 

60,180 

3,458 

4,466 

181,545 


$0 60 
76 
45 
56 
64 

13 50 


$15,000 
1,337,600 

839,700 
43,680 

314,240 
3,186,122 


Totals 






348,343 




$5,736,342 








WASHINGTON 
Indian corn, .bushels. 

Wheat do 

Rye do 

Oats do 

Barley do 

Potatoes .... do 
Hay tons 


74,000 

8,345,000 

18,000 

3,369,000 

777,000 

1,218,000 

287,634 


21.9 
18.0 
12 4 
37.0 
25.0 
107.0 
1.3 


3.375 

463,610 

1,454 

. 91,045 

31 089 

11,381 

221,257 


$0 67 
67 
76 
44 
49 
45 
9 60 


$49,580 

5,591,150 

13,680 

1,482,360 

380 730 

548,100 

2,761,286 


Totals 






823,211 




$10,826,886 









28 

gold tliere, made in the previous year — 1874 — were confirmed. 
You know the history of those da3's of placer mining in the 
gulches, and outside, the ordeals of fire and water, and Indian 
hostility, which the gold hunters experienced. You know the 
attempt of the Government to prevent these expeditions, and 
the final abandonment of the attempt. You know the opident 
results of quartz mining since that time. There are men here 
who, no doubt, have had experience in that connection. 

THE LINES OF EARLY EXPLORATION. 

In your rapid development, the lines of travel of the early 
explorers are almost obliterated. The banks of the rivers 
have been changing with the seasons. The very fauna and 
flora are passing away. But the traditions connected with the 
Red Man are not altogether extinct, for the muse of Longfel- 
low has thrown a poetic glamour over the land of the Dakotas, 
the doorway of the west wind, the portals of the sunset and 
the home of handsome women ! The savage wars are all too 
fresh in the memory of the living to evoke the muse of poetry or 
history, and to make a romance of their dark and bloody annals. 
The devoted wife of Custer, with a Rembrandt pencil and in 
her own breezy style, tender and true, has painted the ad- 
ventures of her hero and his troopers, amidst the scenes 
of romantic exploration. The " Black Hills " cast their 
^'gloomy light" over her blithe spirit, when they shrouded her 
life with clouds which weep a "loss forever new." God asked 
her to walk on alone and in the shadow.* 

I cannot do more than refer to these later years. Many of 
you have seen the changes which have taken place since the 
brave Custer brothers were massacred by the red fiends. 
Otlier more fortunate, but less famous Generals, with " Boots 
and Saddle," scouts and skill, have since subdued the treach- 
erous foe with whom we now make persuasive talks and doubtful 
treaties. Still it may not be inappropriate to recall the earliest 
and luckiest adventure of our Government when Dakota and 
Montana were — nay, all the region of old Louisiana — was terra 
incogn ita. 

TRACKS OVER THE NORTHWEST. 

If I could place before you a map of the territory west of 
the Mississippi and compare it with a map of to-day, the mar- 
vel would at a glance stand revealed. I have had such a map 
before me as I reflected upon this retrospect. It is a map of 
■" Lewis and Clark's track across the western portion of North 
America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, made by 



Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddle," concluding paragraph. 



29 

order of the Executive of the United States in 1804-'5-'6, and 
copied by Samiiel Lewis from the original drawing of William 
Clark." 

Mackenzie's track. 

Mackenzie, in 1789, — made a diagonal track across the con- 
tinent. He confirmed the northwest passage ; but declared it 
impracticable. His route to the Pacific was in 1793. In his 
previous route to the Arctic — when he baptized the great river 
after his own name, he hugged the boundary of our pos- 
sessions. He passed within a few miles of the Red river of 
the north ; and his map shows that he made a shrewd guess 
as to the bend of the " Missesourie." 

"According to the Indian accounts," he writes — "it runs to 
the south of west; so that if it were to be considered as the 
Mississippi, — no western line could strike it." 

A hundred years ago on the Fourth of July, the sun set at 
or about ten and rosa before two when Mackenzie and his 
brave company were having a talk with the Slave-Lake Indians 
about the terrible dragons of the north who would devour 
him. He defied auguries and laughed at incantations; and 
then proceeded northward. On the 10th of July, 1789, he 
saw the sun shining at midnight over realms which may some 
dav beckon your children to fresh enterprises. 

His little light over these north-western lands, provoked 
further inquir}'. 

LEWIS AND Clark's track. 

It was a part of Mr. Jefferson's plan, after the acquisition of 
Louisiana, to explore the river Missouri from its confluence 
with the Mississippi to its source, and thence to cross the 
mountains by the shortest route to the first navigable water 
on the western side, and follow it as far as the shores of the 
Pacific. Congress authorized such a measure on the 18tli of 
January, 1803. The Message of Jefi^erson in 1806 presents to 
Congress the resiilts of that action in the report of Captain 
Clark, and his second in command. Captain Lewis." 

These brave and sagacious men obtained an accurate knoAvl- 
edge of the new territory with a view to the establishment of 
comity and commerce Avith the Indians. They entered the 
Missouri on the 14th of May, 1804, and on the 1st of Novem- 
ber following they wintered near the Mandau towns, 1,609 
miles above the mouth of the river. I need not say that Bis- 
marck does not appear upon the older map, for the German Chan- 
cellor had not then entered upon his career of iron and blood. 
His fame had not become continental, much less world wide. 

* Travels to the Source of the Missouri, &c., by Captains Lewis and Clark. 
Three volumes. London edition, 1815. 



30 

It is curious to follow these explorers in boats, — their sail 
and tow line route over and around sand bars, passing bluffs 
and Indian villages, and places even then not altogether 
unknown to the French and Canadian traders. Is it not a 
romance to follow them far up into the mountains where now 
white citizens are preparing constitutions for statehood? 
These adventures are detailed with a methodical and pains- 
taking particularity, which I can compare to no other itinerary 
unless it be Xenophon's Anabasis. Subsisting on hunting, 
when not on the verge of starvation, fighting the savage foe, 
when not smoking the pipe of peace — improvising canoes for 
rivers and buying horses for portages — they reach the great 
Divide and pass safely to the sea, at the mouth of the 
Columbia. The company consisted of some forty persons. 
They had many bales of impedimenta, such as clothing, work- 
ing utensils, flint locks, powder and ball, and Indian presents. 
Among the latter were richly laced coats and cocked hats for 
chiefs, flags, knives, tomahawks, beads, mirrors, handkerchiefs, 
paints, and such other articles as would please the savage taste. 

Their keel boat had one large sail and twenty-two oars. It 
was provided with a bulwark for defense. They had also two 
perioques or open oar boats. 

Amid fog, rain and storms, they found themselves, about the 
last of August, 1804, among the Sioux, who received them with 
great eclat. In fact these Indians carried some of the party in 
great honor upon an illustrated buftalo robe, and presented 
them with a fat dog fricasseed, of which they partook h'eartily, 
and found it well flavored. The wampum was interchanged . 
There was a frequent rivalry of the bucks with bow and arrow 
for beads. They had dances to the grating music of the 
tambourine, with pebbles in it. 

INDIAN ORATORY. 

There were orators among the Indians in that day who had 
the eloquence if not the brevity and modesty of civilization. 
" I have listened," said White Crane, " to what our father's 
words were yesterday. I am a young man and do not wish to 
talk much. My fathers have made me a Chief. I had much 
sense before, but now I think I have more than ever." This 
is an example for our recent councils ; for his speech was brief. 

It may strike the reader of this narrative that the " talk " of 
these Sioux indicate great good will toward the white man, 
and, especially, toward the Great Father. To be sure this 
good will was now and then interrupted by an attempt to kill, 
or the larceny of a horse or a liatchet. These incidents, to- 
gether with sickness, lack of food, detentions and troubles, 
were untoward ; but, on the whole, the expedition was well 
managed. It revealed glimpses of the riches, not as we now 



31 

kno"\v tliem ; but even on a superficial view it revealed promises 
of a Wonder Laud, of which even Jeft'erson had hardly dreamed. 

nuNEERS WITH SPIRITS. 

The Indians were in distress then, as they have been ever 
since. They were anxious that their scpiaws should be cared 
for, and that something more than medals should be bestowed. 
They wanted clothes and food ; they wanted powder and ball ; 
and one of them, known as "the Half Man," who said that he was 
no w^arrior — seemed anxious that Captain Clark should supply 
them with some of their Great Father's milk, meaning whiskey. 

Why not ? Many of our pioneer adventures smack of a 
jollity hardly " prohibitory." 

As early as 1716, Governor Spottswood of Virginia had a 
famous ride along with some fifty gentlemen, and their retain- 
ers, rangers and red men, to the Shenandoah valle}'. It was 
then thought that the Alleghanies were impassable ; but the 
rollicking party took their wa}' westward and scaled the Blue 
Ridge. They admired the laud so much that they not onlj- 
had their horses shod with golden horseshoes, set with jewels, 
which had been prepared in London for these enterprising- 
dudes of the old frontiers of Virginia, but, the Chronicle says, 
that they got the men together, loaded their arms, drank the 
King's health in champagne and fired a volley, — then they drank 
the Prince's health in Burgundy and fired a volley, — then 
they drank the health of the rest of the royal family in claret, 
and fired a volley, and then the Governor's health in native 
whisky, and fired a volley.^'" How many more volleys they fired, 
and how they were fired back into Virginia, is not related. They 
inscribed upon their horseshoes the legend: Sicjuvatiran- 
scendere mantes, and fired a voile}'. Then the Governor accented 
his jubilation by advising the Crown in a state paper that the 
pass was feasible and " that from ye western side of one of the 
small mountains w'ch I saw. Lake Erie is very visable, w'ch shows 
how easy a matter it is to gain possession of these lakes !" 

Whether this remarkable account is due to the mixture of 
the liquors which darkened the vision or the smoke of the 
volley's which befogged so as to magnify it, the muse of his- 
tory has not determined. It may have been the impurity of 
the atmosphere and liquors combined. Mrs. Custer has said 
that the air of new territories always adds a cipher or two to 
stories which one hears in the States. 

As an ofi^set to this narrative and to show that the prohibi- 
tion question is by no means new in this neighborhood, — it is 
recorded that there was one tribe called the " Ricaras," — 
since abreviated in name and numbers, who lived near the 
mouth of the Cheyenne, to whom spirituous liquors were dis- 

■'E. L. Hinsdale's Old Northwest, 1888, p. 17^ 



32 

gusting. Tliey were offered whisky under the supposition that 
it was quite as agreeable to them as to the other Indians ; but 
they actually refused it with this sensible remark : " They 
were surprised that their Great Father should present them a, 
liquor which would make them fools, and that no man could be 
their friend who tried to lead them into such follies." 

TO RESUME THE NARRATIVE. 

The first tribe which Lewis and Clark met in this vicinage 
was the Yanktous. They lived upon your own beautiful river, 
then known as the Jaques and subsequently as the James. It 
has since degenerated into " the Jim." They were described 
as stout; well proportioned, having dignity and boldness. 
They were equipped with bear's claws and feathers. There 
was an association of brave 3'oung men among them who had 
caucused and vowed never to retreat before any danger, or 
aid their natural valor by any artifice. I will cite you an 
instance of their heroism : They were crossing the Missouri 
on the ice. A hole lay immediately in their course. The 
foremost of the band disdained to go around it ; he , went 
straight forwai-d and into it. He was lost ; but the rest con- 
sidered it unuecessar}^ to follow his example. I rehearse this 
adventure as a political analogue connected with the division 
and admission of Dakota ; I leave you to make the appli- 
cation. Of course you will not apply it to any member of 
Congress, certainly not to your delegate Mr. Gifford, nor to 
your agents at Washington who labored for your statehood. 
Their good work is apparent and they survive to rejoice over 
its accomplishment. 

THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 

There is a sameness in the old descriptions of the Missouri 
Valley. There is the same prairie and choteaux, the same 
kind of tributaries, with the same bends, bluffs, snags and 
sand bars, the same sort of Indians with their red pipe and 
ashen stem, the same dances, the same curious burial of their 
dead in the trees, and the same worship of stone imagery, the 
same mode of naming Chiefs after some conspicuous quality, 
the same love of smoking kinnekanick and drinking whiskey, 
and the same grasshoppers and prickly pear. There is the 
same vegetation — sycamore prevalent on the shores — grape, 
plum and pawpaw in the Avoods. There is an iteration of 
animated nature, the porcupine, beaA'er, horned sheep, elk, 
jack-rabbit, wild goose, duck, swan, brant, pelican, plover, 
curlew, magpie and whippoor-will. There is the same amusing 
•petits cJiiens in their underground commonwealth, with their 
perpetually whistling bark. Same varieties of wolf, deer and 
bear ; but everywhere the same perils from drought, burnt 



33 

prairie, grizzlies, rattlesnakes and Indians, relieved by tlie 
ever beautiful grass in the autumn, lifting its green blades 
above the charred ground, and the grand mountains of the 
Shoshone land. The plains were enlivened by herds of fleet 
antelope and bulging bison, the latter in such multitudes that 
the narrators "cannot exaggerate in saying that at a single 
glance we saw twenty thousand." 

INDIAN HABITS. 

The habits of the Indians, perhaps, at that time were not 
unlike those of a later day : Their mode of cooking, of carry- 
ing the water in the paunches of animals, their wooden bowls, 
their lodges, their moccasins and leggings, the vanit}' of both 
sexes in their gaudy dress and the painted horror of their 
bodies in the dance, their bread of corn and beans, their 
pumpkins, squashes, watermelons, their drudging women and 
lazy men, their tender of squaws who persecuted the explorers 
wdth equivocal civilities, and their bloody revenges upon each 
other. The same experience followed the travellers all 
through the Dakota country until they reached the land of the 
Mandans. 

The narrative describes the plain and rugged country 
between the Red river of the north and the Missouri, as loosely 
occupied by a great nation whose primitive name is "Darcota." 
They were early known to the French as " the People of the 
Lake." Ihey became sub-divided into many tribes. These 
had a similarity of language. They made annual encamp- 
ments on the James river, as common ground, for friendship 
and trade. Quantum mutatis! How much has that James 
Valley changed since that era of savagery and poverty ? 

THE JAMES RIVER VALLEY. 

But yesterday your fruitful Valley was whitened with 
the bones of the buffalo. Now it is an ideal farming area. 
It is a lesser Nile region, without its overflow. Artesian 
wells give water where the sun once made drought perennial. 
The water-power of your matchless valley is as yet immeas- 
urable by ordinary mechanical standards. It is so prevalent 
that your people will utilize its specific gravity for the diver- 
sity of thei?- industries. When its undiminished flow and 
steady pressure from the bosom of the earth are properly har- 
nessed by mechanism, it will give its lucid lymph to make 
grasses for stock and lawns for beautiful homes. Its sunless 
currents, through the ingenuity of man, will enhance the rich 
soil by quenching its thirst. Fabulous are the wasted ener- 
gies of your water power, as we count it by the standard horse- 
power of mechanics; but still more marvelous are the real 
energies of the soil which it Avould fructify. 



34 

Tliis beautiful and fruitful valley of tlie James may uot be 
as redolent of historic association and traditions as another 
James river of the colouial days ; but deeper than historical 
or traditional incident are Dakota's ]^ure springs under a 
magic more enchanting than that of Aladdin, which leap from 
your modern Artesium. 

We can follow in fancy the thousands of miles of railroad 
bearing your garnered wealth of wheat, corn and flax to the 
seaboard ; and see it like one great golden sheaf before which 
all the other sheafs of our Commonwealth of Israel make 
obeisance without jealousy. 

Let me return a moment to your resources. The Dakota 
Territory harvests one-thirtieth part of the world's wheat 
crop . Her growth in 1888 was 52,600,000 bushels, of which 
North Dakota alone supplied 36,000,000 upon less than one- 
twentieth of her soil. Besides, the quality enhances the 
quantity, so far as money goes. This wheat has the command 
of every market, at the highest prices, and it is grown at the 
least expense, and has great facility for transportation. Your 
one hundred millions of bushels of wheat, corn and oats came 
from less than seventy thousand farms. 

No more significant or stately figures, no more splendid 
result has ever been shoAvn upon any land upon earth, not 
excepting the fields of Eussia or the Valley of the Nile, 
A vast proportion of land is still uncultivated, in spite of the 
great bonanza farms of the Eed River Valley, which take up 
but a small portion of the great waterless inland lake area of 
ten thousand square miles. Your fruitful soil invites an over- 
fiowing population in the East to remunerative labor. 

I have seen the extensive wheat fields of Russia and Egypt, 
haA-e reviewed the accounts of East Indian cultivation, and 
French and English economy in farming methods, and can 
avouch that, although you may find competition and prohibi- 
tor}^ tarifis, you may rest in peace that nothing, save civil 
contention and national catastrophe can prevent you from 
holding the markets of the world. 

What a contrast is the farming within your boundary Avith 
that of other lands. First, you subjugate the prairie, which 
is stoneless and treeless. You break the sod, you utilize the 
grass roots, you backset them. Your fallows enrich the soil. 
Another spring comes, you plough them deepl}^, and you 
harrow. Your press drills sow the seed, the sun shines and 
embroiders the face of fields in emerald. Then your golden 
harvest comes with its cutting and binding. The threshing- 
follows. You have swinging stackers for the straw, and you 
have bundle teams, and grain teams, and bulk wagons and 
elevators ; and, lo ! the land returns manifold to you in the 
priceless rew^ard of the well spent liusbandr}^ 



6b 



TIMBER LANDS. 



Nature lias provided upon your east and nortli forests 
of timber, and -waters to bear it through tlie gatewa}^ of your 
territory. Though still held in " reserve," these timber lands, 
containing ten billions feet of pine oak, ash and elm, will soon 
become the aider of your varied industries. 

The laws applicable to 3'our land, as well as the refinements 
of machinery, have enabled the settler to establish himself 
with house, barn and farm and all the implements belonging 
to agriculture with a comfort, stability and success never 
before vouchsafed to any people, and never before realized 
with so much promptitude. 

CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE AND THEIR INDUSTRY. 

Your population is thrifty and active. Its employment is 
not built upon the opportunities and chances which belong to 
mining altogether, nor is it subject to the vicissitudes and temp- 
tations of trade and commerce. Your wealth is drawn from 
the generous bosom of nature. The results of your harvests 
liave attracted millions of capital to your manufacturing and 
transportation centres. Your foundries and factories, homes 
and churches, schools and colleges, indicate the determined 
character of your people. They vindicate the policy of free- 
dom which, under favoriug conditions, enables 3'our lands to 
he settled and your mines to be worked. Your prosperity is 
not the result of "booming," nor are your railroads altogether 
Luilt upon the bounties of the Government . Your prosperity 
is stable because it is not feverish nor eruptive, but fixed as 
the principles upon which our institutions are based. If 
ihere is anything locally injurious, you will rectify it by the 
machinery of a popular State Government. If there is any- 
thing fleeting and temporary, you will soon have that maturity 
and agency which can legislate, not for a day, but for all time. 
Already you can feel the throb of your own body politic as it 
begins to pulsate to-day at Sioux City. 

MINING. 

Turn your eyes to the Black Hills of the West. The record 
started with over four millions a year of gold and silver in 
1881. It soon became a steadv product. According to Mr. 
Day's latest returns,* it has continued at about three millions 
yearly. In the last year it was estimated at 12,900,000. This is 
w'ell for a new community, in our yearly product of $86,357,000. 
Since the working of j'our mines, more than $30,000,000 have 
Leen the result. In their gloomj' chambers lie mineral 

* Powell's Geological Survey, 1887, page 59. 



36 

riches, as jet uncatalogued and uncounted . They are await- 
ing your magic lamp and the " open sesame" of coming enter- 
prise. Out will come gold, silver, iron, tin, mica and coal to 
diversify your industr}'-, gladden the heart of labor, and inspire 
civic pride and dignity. 

A NEW STATE AND YOUNG PEOPLE. 

A casual observer will notice that your people are, on the 
average, young. A decade makes a veteran settler, among 
them. They have an exultant bearing which beloDgs 
to a 3'outhful State. They are honest. Their ethics are as 
square as their sections of laud. Your morality is founded on 
the right angles of justice. Happily, you have escaped the 
troubles of older communities, like those of the South. You 
have no color line. You are color blind. You have no race 
question ; for your interests are homogeneous. Only your soil 
is black. Its color is fixed as well as fruitful. The face of your 
Territory is a vast picture, lighted and shaded as the seasons 
come and go, by those alternations which give to Nature 
activity and rest, efflorescence and fruitage, seed time and 
harvest, and to labor its reward. At this summer time, the 
green and gold of the fields under your beautiful sky make a 
landscape which pleases the taste and gratifies the j)ride. 

COMPOSITE PEOPLE. 

Your settlements have the varied aspect which belong to 
many races. You have here the best enterprise of Scandinavia, 
Russia, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, and our own 
_ Eastern and border States. They will attract other peoplea 
no less worthy, who will enhance your values and contribute 
to 3'our growth. In the northern part of the Territory you 
have the polite Frenchman, even though he be a half-breed, as 
ready for a trade as his ancestors. You have the German, aa 
thrifty here as at home, and here with a full fledged Wit- 
tenagemofe, and the women for counsellors. You have many a 
descendant of the .scakls of Iceland, whose ancestry repeated 
the Sagas, and had their open-aired Thing, or Parliament. 
You have the Russian as a citizen freed from Gzarism, enjoy- 
ing his local Zemsivo. You have the Celt revelling in the full 
fruition of that Home Rule which he sought in vain in 
Ireland ; and with liiin in the full liberty of conscience are the 
Catholics of Belgium and France. You have the Norseman, 
who is now so mild a mannered man, that no one would ever 
suspect that his ancestor was a viking and a pirate. Finally, 
you have on both sides of the Missouri, sometimes theoreticall}' 
on, and generally and practically off the reservations, Indians 
who, when they so determine, cannot speak a word except in 
their own tongue ; some of whom are said to dress so finely. 



37 

that they can excel the dudes of Broadway and give them 
" three points in their blanket." In fine, you have a com- 
jDosite of all the races and their various languages and 
institutions. They here harmonize under full toleration, not- 
withstanding they have not acquired the Yolapuk, as a 
medium. 

TEADITION AND POETRY. 

The stories and traditions from which poetry is derived — 
its very argument — abound throughout your Territory, from 
Devil's Lake, with its wonderful snake, to the Shadowy Giants 
which once guarded the Black Hills from human intru- 
sion. Wherever forests grew, there is found the weird " ances- 
tral tree," in whose boughs the dead Indians are sepulchred, 
entombed like the coffin of the Arab camel-driver, between 
earth and heaven. 

Your Missouri is itself a flowing epic. As the early ex- 
plorers " found it difficult to comprise in any general descrip- 
tion the characteristics of the Missouri — so extensive and fed 
by so many streams which have their sources in a great variety 
of soils and climates," still, as they wrote, " the great river was 
sufficientl}^ powerful to give all its waters something of a com- 
mon character." Its very face, its banks, its channel, its 
blufis, its productions, its timbers, may undergo changes, owing 
to the variety of its tribute, but it may be said that its de- 
posits, unlike some which are put into other banks, tend to the 
enrichment of the country. Oat of its local variety is evoked 
that unity of which the Constitution is the symbol and the 
bond ! 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 

Local government was the goal of our colonial fathers. It 
meant a present and home remedy for the grievances cata- 
logued in the Declaration ; it meant freedom from arrest with- 
out warrant ; fair trial by a jury of the vicinage ; no quarter- 
ing of troops or display of forces to despoil the houses of the 
people or overawe their individual will ; no taxation without 
representation ; no suspension of laws by royal decrees ; no 
foreign parasites upon the body jjolitic and no barnacles upon 
the ship of State . It meant a fair sea, a free breeze and a 
home harbor for all the ventures of life in the pursuit of hap- 
piness. 

This was what Dakota had demanded of the Federal Congress 
for years. To this enfranchisement, her people and those of 
her sister commonwealths further west, had the inalienable 
right ; and to postpone or refuse this was an outrage not 
only comparable with the insolence of King George and his 
ministers, but in this age and land, and under the light of 



38 

the past century of advancement in representative and respon- 
sible governments, as odious and detestable as tlie tyranny of 
the King toward tlie Colonies. 

what's in a name. 

It mattered little to me in championing your statehood, 
whether Dakota was called by one name or another, so that it 
had two baptisms, and two names, and a divided entity. It 
was enough to know that you had the nameless virtues which 
constitute free communities. It mattered little to me whether 
you were called North Dakota or South Dakota, provided a 
division was made by which the future of our Union, regard- 
less of North or South, would be strengthened and other and 
older States not overawed or undervalued in the national 
economy. 

THE TEUE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT. 

The reason given hj Rousseau in his social compact for gov- 
erning by alien rule, was that strangers are less biased by 
matters in which they are disinterested, and are not liable to 
the factions and interests of the commonwealth. This is the 
very irony of popular government. Old Rome had a better 
system. Her Decemviri never assumed the right to pass any 
law merely on their own authorit}'. They seemed, at least, to 
stand aloof. They gave the right reason for their action. The 
people was the basis of all authority. " Nothing that we pro- 
pose," said they to the people, " can pass into law without 
your consent. Be yourselves, ye Romans, the authors .of those 
laws on which your happiness depends." 

That legislator or ruler avIio would now undertake to rule a 
people by virtue of his estrangement from their interests, 
would lind himself in control of an anomalous system which 
would utterly fail. 

That we have become an orderly, powerful, progressive 
Republic, is due as much to the reservation of powers not 
granted as those granted in the Constitution by the People 
for a Federal system. That strong sense of duty to the law 
and that steadfast love of liberty which were embodied in the 
canons of Magiia Charfa were fostered in the New World by 
exercising the powers of local colonial government at the doors 
of the people . Our system gives to State legislatures control 
over local affairs, and to municipal government control over 
the affairs of still more limited communities. 

He is an impractical dodrinaire indeed who would to-day 
seriously discuss in America— I will not say m England — the 
question whether or not local home government is the best 
institution for the welfare of communities. 



39 

Your long forbearance "witli tlie non-action of Congress has 
at last been recompensed b}* the guarantee of local rule and 
State legislation. In most matters, especially those of 
domestic concernment, there is no other rule possible to 
intelligent men, or safe for human contentment. You cannot 
be tied, like children, to the apron-strings of an Interior De- 
partment, nor to have your maturity directed by ofl&cials quar- 
tered on your peoj)le from other States. 

DIVISION AND ADMISSION OF DAKOTA. 

I am devoutly thankful to God that it has jDleased him to 
allow one so humble as myself to be an agent in hastening 
and maturing the recent legislation, under which independence 
and sovereignty through popular conventions — representative 
of the people of four new States — are to be established. May 
I not rejoice that the patriotic defenders of these elements of 
American and human freedom, and of your rights, were able 
to charter these Northwestern Territories, under proper 
boundaries and with just franchises, as coequals beneath the 
grateful shade of the American Federation ? 

A PERSONAL EXPLANATION, — STRICTLY PARLIAMENTARY. 

I do rejoice with you this da3\ I did not agree with many 
honorable members who, I fear, hindered and who now claim 
that they helped you to your present happy and exalted 
relation. Time and the Record will show their motives, 
votes, propositions, bills and conduct. I leave them 
to the crucial test of American intelligence. Although a 
representative of the Atlantic seaboard, I do not forget that 
I am the son of a pioneer to early Ohio. I learned under 
Stephen A. Douglas that there vras a limit upon Federal con- 
trol and constitutional vigor, and that that limit was fixed in 
the interest of the hardy habitant of the Territories. I 
had not studied the history of your Missouri Yalley altogether 
in vain, and felt a pride, which had no scintilla of ambition or 
vanity, in the advancement of our constellated Hag upon 
this northern and western frontier. 

MINNESOTA STATEHOOD. 

• I gave my suffrage in 1858 for the admission of Minnesota. 
Minnesota was also opposed. On what ground ? On the 
ground that such a region could never sustain a sufficient and 
permanent population for a State ! She had fur traders and 
lumbermen, but no power to sustain animal life after the 
exhaustion of these industries! Yet, in two decades, she gave 
forty million bushels of wheat, and her population soon became 
thrifty and abundant. ' 



40 

Tor ^-ears tlie same objection was made to Dakota ; Init in 
spite of her " clondecT titles" and a long-indifferent Congress, 
siie is Viistly curtailing the material and political consequence 
of Ler eastern neighbor. The bruiting about "bad lands" has 
turned out to be a brutum fulmen, for they are productive. 
Tour ordinary lands compare well with those of Ohio or New 
York, and the great body of the soil is shown to be exception- 
ally rich ; while in minerals your mountains are marvellous. 

i am more than repaid to-day by the observance of your 
jubilee of Freedom, and by the knowledge that an intelligent 
and just people, regardless of much that may seem heterodox 
in my politics, have appreciated the purity of my intentions 
and confirmed the wisdom of the " Instructions" which I 
had passed for the prompt division by law and admission by 
proclamation of Dakota ! 

It is too late now to challenge, even dimly, the remotest 
possibility of a failure to make Eepublican governments in 
these States. Tlie elements vrhich make your population, 
drawn from New England and New York, Pennsylvania and 
other States, and the better elements of the old world, have 
learned under other auspices, and n;)t without sacrifices, to 
value the heritage of freemen and to m oke no institutions that 
are not Republican in form and Democratic in essence. 

Is it not enough that your admission is regvilar, rational and 
merited. The act was signed by an outgoing President of one 
party, and your admission hailed by the incoming President. 
The present executive said in his message that " the judgment 
and discretion of Congress was fair and impartial, having 
reference only to the public welfare and to the right of the 
peo]3le of these new communities to a full participation in the 
privilege of citizenship." 

RECORDS OF VOTES ON ADMISSION. 

After m'any weary delays, on the 16tli of January last the 
Senate bill for the admission of South Dakota was called up . 
It was very unlike the measure which was reported by the 
majority of the House Committee on Territories. That com- 
mittee disfavored the division of Dakota. Finally it reported 
a substitute which was known as the "Omnibus bill." This 
included New Mexico. It was the result of much caucusing, 
and was greatly changed from the original propositions made^ 
by both Senate and House representing the dominant party in 
each House. Neither of these propositions proposed the ab- 
solute division of Dakota or its prompt admission. It was, 
however, debated on that day. 

In that debate I had the honor, along with the delegates in- 
terested from the Territories, to take a somewhat prominent 
part. • 



41 

When the bill came up on the 17th of January it was de- 
l3ated at length, but it went over until the IStli. 

Again, on the 18tli January, an amendment offered by Mr. 
McDonald, of Minnesota, was voted dovn. Then an amend- 
ment by Mr. Springer, of Illinois, was proposed re-submitting 
the Sioux constitution of 1885 to the people, with some inci- 
dental provisions as to boundary, etc. Then an amendment 
^•as offered by your delegate for the admission of South 
Dakota under the SioTix Falls constitution, and also for the 
-continuance of North Dakota as a Territory, but providing for 
an election as to naming South Dakota, the boundary, etc. It 
also provided an enabling act for North Dakota. Other 
-amendments were offered. The amendment of the majority of 
the Committee of the House was debated on that day. There- 
upon Mr. Baker, of New York, proposed to re-commit the bill, 
with instructions to admit South Dakota into the Union, and 
to provide enabling acts for North Dakota, Montana and 
Washington Territories. This was voted down, and the " Om- 
Tiibus bill " 23assed the House. 

The bill went to the Senate. It Avas disagreed to by that 
body. Then there was a long hiatus, and the friends of the 
Territories were becoming restive. However, it was called up 
•on the 14th February, with the report of the failure to agree be- 
tween the two Houses. 

Amendments were tendered to the motion, among them one 
by Mr. Baker, of New York, which was an instruction for the 
House conferees to recede so as to allow, first, the exclusion 
■of New Mexico from the bill, and, second, the admission of 
South Dakota under the Sioux Falls constitution, and, third, 
the re-submission of that constitution to the people, with pro- 
visions for the election of State officers only, and without a 
new vote on the question of " division." It also provided for 
the admission of North Dakota, Montana and Washington 
either by the proclamation of the President, or by further 
action of Congress in the way of formal acts of admission. 

This was an advance ; but it left to the conference to say 
"whether the old question should come up again in a new Con- 
gress, either at an extra session or at the regular session of 
the Fifty-first Congress. 

Thereupon, I had the honor to propose a sweeping substi- 
tute, which I had outlined and urged in the Neiv York World, 
in the caucus and in the House. Inasmuch as time was 
precious and was fast gliding away, and as I knew the intention 
of many friends who honestly thought that Congress ought 
to do nothing, and as the Senate would not admit New Mexico, 
I proposed, first, its alisolute exclusion from the bill ; second, 
an unqualified instruction to the Committee of conference to 
provide for the division of Dakota and the admission of South 



42 

Dakota uucler tlie Sioux Falls constitution b}' proclamation, 
and a new election for Federal officers, as well as State; and 
third, the admission of North Dakota, Montana and Washing- 
ton on the same basis, and all of them under proclamation by 
the President. The last instructions referred all other matters 
of detail to the Committee of Conference for their discretion. 

This proposition was intended to be a finality. It was in- 
struction, not advice or request, absolute instruction. -There 
was in it no " if " or " and," no ambiguity or alternative. It 
was attacked bitterly ; but, at last, the House was brought to 
a vote upon it directly. A Kentucky statesman insisted on a, 
separate vote on every separable proposition. This, under the 
rules, he had the right to do. The vote on the exclusion of 
New Mexico was 135 against 105. Mr. Breckenridge voted in 
the affirmative in order to move a reconsideration, and the 
fight was kept up. He failed on a vote of 186 to 109. 

The second proposition, for the admission of South Dakota, 
by proclamation, under the Sioux Falls Constitution and for a 
new election of State and Federal officers and without a new 
vote on the question of division, then came up. It was carried 
by 137 to 103. 

I^lie territories were gaining and the opposition was losing. 
Then filibustering began by a motion to adjourn. That failed 
by 82 yeas against 143 nays ; the territories still gaining and 
the opposition still losing. Another motion to adjourn failed. 

The subject then went over until the next day, on the con- 
dition that no more dilatory motions should be made. Upon 
the next day the second proposition was again voted on a 
motion to reconsider. The house stood by the territories and 
the instructions. 

I confess that I did not spend a very quiet or sleepful night, 
but I was gratified when, in the morning, the vote showed that 
the territories had 116 yeas and the nays only 109, the instruc- 
tions still gaining. 

The resolution as to North Dakota, Montana and Washing- 
ton, to be admitted on the same basis, and all of them by proc- 
lamation, went through without an aye and no vote, together 
Avitli the last proposition as to indifi'erent matters. Thereupon, 
the indefatigable gentleman from Kentucky insisted upon a 
vote upon the initial clause of instruction. He desired to submit 
a preliminar}" inquiry to the Speaker. The Chair heard it. He 
desired to know whether, if the enacting clause of instructions 
was voted down, the conferees would not be free and unin- 
structed ? The Speaker replied " except in so far as they may 
accept these votes as expressing the sense of the House." The 
gentleman undertook to argue it after the previous question. 
To this I objected. The vote was taken. The yeas were 148 
and the navs 102. So that from the beginniuo- to the end of 



43 

the struggle tlie sentiment of the House was expressed in favor 
of the instructions. This was on the 15th February. Congress 
was drawing to a close. Day after day passed. 

The friends of the Territories again became restive, and 
anxious. Should there be an extra session? Should the 
whole matter be taken up in the Fifty-first Congress, or should 
the matter be ended promptly ? After much conference out- 
side, of which gentlemen who are here are well advised, there 
were a few accommodations made, and the instructions were 
complied with ; and ver}^ slowly the conference reported and the 
bill became ala\v. It was signed by the President with a c^uill 
taken from an American eagle, which it was said was given to 
some champion to entwine around his scalp lock. 

Thus it appears from this record, the pages of which are 
accessible to everybod}^* that the straight line to settle 
the question of admission and division not only of the two 
Dakotas, but of the other Territories of Montana and Wash- 
ington, was carried in such an emphatic manner that the 
people have universally accepted the four States and placed 
their starry emblems upon our flag, iu advance of the formal- 
ities which are to-day proceeding in the territories.* 

THE PIPE OF PEACE. 

I am content that he should keep the souvenir. I am con- 
tent to day to leave at home the tomahawk of Tammany and 
wear the magic moccasin of Hiawatha whose stride when he 
went courting Minnehaha — was like that of the steam loco- 
motive — a mile a minute ! I am content to smoke with you — 
the jasper pipe with the ashen stem and to join Avitli laughing 
Hiawatha in singing, that if : 

" There are feuds j'et unforgotten 
Wounds that ache and still may opi-n, 
For that reason and no other 
Would I wed the fair Dakota ! 
That our tribes may be united 
And old wounds healed forever . " 

Applying the generous "thought to our whole land, let us 
infuse into our politics more sunshine — which is love, and less 
shadow, which is hate ! 

* Vide Record, Second Session, Fiftieth Congress, S. S. Cox's Eemarks, pp. 
800-6, 938, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1911, 1939, 1940. Votes on "Omnibus Bill ' 
pp. 934, 949, 950, 951. 952 

On Cox Instructions, viz : 

"Resolved, That the House instruct the new conferees to recede from the 
amendments to the Senate bill 185 in the following respects : 

1 . That the Territory of New Mexico and the proposed new State thereof 
may be excluded from the bill. 

2. That the bill may be so amended in conference as to provide for the admis- 
sion of South Dakota by ijroclamation of the President, under the Sioux Falls 
constitution, to be resubmitted to the people of South Dakota, with provisions 



44 



OUR CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER. 



The Constitution of 1787-89, made a more perfect union 
among the States tlian the Articles of Confederation liad guar- 
anteed. It was in sucli direct contrast with the constitutions 
and the abstract ideas of the French Revolution, that while 
the latter fades from our vision, the former remains perpetual. 
It has stood the test of time and the strain of war. 

It is true that the Supreme Court decisions reveal the fact 
that there have been many dissenting opinions in relation to 
the powders granted and the rights reserved under that Consti- 
tution ; and although we may regard these differences of 
opinion as to certain clauses in the Constitution, as inauspic- 
ious and menacing — yet the fact that we have a suj)reme 
tribunal of independence and dignity, which holds the scales 
of justice evenly between the Federal Government and the 
States, is a matter as well of state equilibrium as of trans- 
cendant pride. 

" The Supreme Court, as the seventy-eighth number of the 
Federalist prophesied, remains " the bulwark of a limited Con- 
stitution against legislative encroachments." 

The constitutional changes during the last quarter of a cen- 
tury, growing out of the war, have been great, although few. 
But to the great body of our people, they are of little import 
and anxiety compared with the interests guaranteed under 
State authority, which come home to the business and bosom 
of our people. 

One thing may be said for the Supreme tribunal and that 
is : that notwithstanding the two schools of philosophy — that 
of loose construction and of strict construction — the best con- 
struction prevails. It has been inspired by the desire to 
restrict the powers of the Federal Government within its 
proper grants and limitations, and reserve those which relate 
to the several States and their daily domesticities. And this 
is a bond of union . 

Regardless of party ascendancy, either in the country or in. 
the Court, regardless of party traditions, growing out of the 



for a new election of State and Federal officers, and without a new vote on the 
question of divl^^ion. 

3. Further providing that the proposed States of North Dakota, Montana, 
and Washington shall be admitted on the same basis, and all of them under 
proclamation by the President. 

Further, th it all such matters as relate to the election of delegates and appor- 
tionment of the districts in which members to the convention are to be elected, 
the date of holding the convention, and the date of the resubmission of the 
Soiith Dakota constitution, and the location of the temporary seat of govern- 
ment m South Dakota, and such other matters as are not included in the in- 
structions above recited to be referred to the committee of conference for their 
<liscretion ." 

Votes, pp. 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1939, 1940. 



45 

resolutions of '98, or out of the theories upon which the civil 
war was waged — ^tlie framers of the Constitution are vindicated 
by the events between 1789 and 1889. The instrument which 
they framed was not too rigid for the changes of an expanding 
people, nor so lax as to allow the body of Federal power to be 
dissolved. 

There has been no impairment of the obligations, or of the 
efficiency of the constitution. 

The people have come to regard it with reverential awe, not 
born of indifference or superstition or ignorance of its pro- 
visions, but proceeding from an observation of the magnifi- 
cent results which it has achieved within its hundred years of 
vigorous advance. 

Our Constitution was not without forerunners. Its wisdom 
was prompted by such writers as Montesquieu and Locke, and 
many other guides — men of business, of piety, of scholarship 
and of statesmanship; and, therefore, their work was not 
based upon abstract doctrine. Their materials were " gifts of 
the ages," 

In one thing, its framers were ])eculiar ; not in patriotic feel- 
ing; not in nationality; not in language; not in law; not in 
literature; but in the principal of individuality. The Consti- 
tution established nothing that interfered with equality and 
individuality. Every faculty had its opportunity for develop- 
ment and culture. To use the figure of our historian — " As the 
sea is made up of drops, American society is composed of 
sturdy, free and constantly moving atoms, ever in reciprocal 
action, advancing, receding, crossing, struggling against each 
other, and Avitli each other, so that the institutions and laws of 
the country rise out of the mass of individual thought, which, 
like the waters of the ocean, are rolling ever more." 

PERILS TO OUR SYSTEM. 

There are perils Avhich encompass us on many sides. The 
centennary epoch with its halo of light around the form of 
Washington, seems to have illuminated the dark places 
and to have evoked some sinister auguries. While it is not 
unwise to regard these perils to our safety and perpetuity, 
is there any wisdom in exaggerating them on the one hand or 
minimizing them on the other? These perils do not threaten 
so menacingly communities like your own ; for by the provi- 
sions of Congress, your present and future generation will 
never lack for educational facilities of mind and conscience ; 
and, as a consequence, the responsibility for your future will 
be heeded and your duty be done. From signs which I have 
observed, I know that you are already aware of the danger of 
accumulated capital and the crushing power of corporations. 
In whatever form wealth may come, and however asserted, it 



46 

can only do harm when its grted is so increased and its luxu- 
ries are so engendered as to be an insidious and relentless foe 
to simplicity of life and freedom of political action. 

I am not one of those who believe that our political agents 
are as corrupt as they are pictured, nor do I join in the 
Pharisaical cant from the pulpit or the press, which arrogates 
to itself out of its own purity by derogating from the virtue of 
others once in a hundred years. There are men who creep 
out of their shells after long hybernation, to scourge the 
money changers from the temple and the seven devils out of 
our political body. They are not entitled to as much 
emphasis as those who in the heat and dust of active life, 
religious, political, social, educational and otherwise, illustrate 
by daily living and manly struggle the virtues which others 
only preach. 

The great opportunity for gain, which have been increased 
with the lapse of time, is not a source of danger, provided 
honest and thoughtful men avert the corrupt influences. Let 
those who praise our antique virtues look through the mists 
of time, and thus magnify their eulogy. It is always safe to 
form an ideal based upon civic virtue, by which the future 
itself may be directed and measured. 

The great peril of this country has been passed. We can 
look back from our lofty height and from this new part of the 
country without a shudder at the abyss over which we have 
passed. The keen eye of that eagle, by which we are pleased 
to typify our height and Hight, here sweeps an extended 
horizon, and though flying in unerring circles, it gazes with 
unquenched sight upon our full midday radiance, defying all 
the auguries of fate. 

IS THE INCREASE OF STATES DANGEROUS? 

There is no pessimist so cynical, there is no politician so 
corrupt, there is no theorist so wild, who dares ignore the 
splendid secular strength by which we have enlarged our 
domain, enhanced our institutions and giorihed our Republic 
during the last century. 

It puzzles such critics as the London Times to understand 
this remarkable advancement and stability. " It is impos- 
sible," exclaims that paper, " for a unity like America, not to 
be transformed by the plunging into it of realm after realm." 

This is not a clear expression ; but it means that the Editor 
fancies that too many States, four at a birth, is dangerous to 
the system. It thinks that the centre of national gravity must 
surely be altered by the accretion of such new States as those 
which are now forming as the latest constellation. The English- 
man has learned little about us since 1776, if he has not learned 
that the colonial, dependent or Territorial condition is not 



47 

our normal condition. Our peoj^le are citizens, not subjects. 
They have been cultured in communities before they ventured 
into Territories, with the hope, prospect and right of again 
becoming citizens in the full Komanesque quality. 

These are perils surrounding our State, not to be ignored, 
without blunder or crime ; but our danger comes not from the 
causes and commotion predicted by the London journalist. 
There is no danger of tipping over by changing the centre of 
national gravity ; no danger of any modification in the present 
or in the future, to Aveaken the ligature which binds the citizen 
to the sovereignty of the people in the States and in the Union. 
Our new States — realm after realm — when they come, come to 
lengthen, broaden and strengthen every atom or element 
which makes up that national gravity, whose centre is in the 
hearts of an honest people and whose circumference is limited 
only by gulf, ocean, and lake. 

MADISON. 

Madison, ever undismayed, believed in the " due suprem- 
acy of the Nation, with the preservation of the locaj authorities 
in their subordinate usefulness. But he saw clearly that a 
wider extended Territory was the true sphere for a liepublic, 
and, in advance of the Federal convention, he sketched a 
thoroughly comprehensive constitutional government for the 
Union."* 

THE WORLD IS MOVING. 

Even Japan is clothing herself in the habiliments of repre- 
sentative government. They are not made to fit any other 
people than her own. In time they may be so related and 
fitting, that we ourselves will approve of them in detail, as we 
now do in general. Certainly, the world is moving, for within 
our own time we can recall the humorous fact that the 
Emperor of that same Japan died from immoderately laughing 
when told that the Americans governed themselves without 
a king. 

The States are independent of foreign control, and tlie}^ are 
independent in many of their domestic relations. If there be 
a weakness at all, it is the weakness of each which becomes 
the strength of all. So that the farther we have carried our 
Federal frontier, and the more our stars have multiplied, 
the stronger the government of the Federal Union has 
become. 

De Tocqueville, within a half a century, in predicting the 
constant increase of our power, looked upon the Eocky 
Mountains as the probable limit of the United States. He 

*(Baiicroft's History of the Constitution, vol. 1, p. 278. ) 



48 

regarded our progress as having tlie solemnity of a Providen- 
tial event, " like a deluge of men rising unabatedly and daily 
driven onward by tlie hand of God." He saw no danger of 
dismemberment or destruction by the increase of our numbers; 
for our inland seas, our great rivers and exuberant soil would 
remain ; nor would bad laws, revolutions and anarchy ever 
obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise 
which are distinctively characteristic of our race, or ever be 
able to extinguish that knowledge which guides us on our way. 
Rising upon the wiDg of his imagination, he looked to the 
Anglo-American race as covering the immense space contained 
between the Polar regions and the tropics, and from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific. 

This prophecy he verified by considering the ecpiality in 
condition, race, origin, civilization, language, general habits 
and opinions. The growing power of the Republic was to him 
a fact entirely novel in the world, and of which, even the 
imagination- could not find its portals. 

CAUSE OF STABILITY. 

If there has been any danger to our Union or its constit- 
uents, it never came from the new States, it will not come 
from them hereafter. It came from the old States with peculiar 
institutions. Younger children are not prone to be matricidal. 
Profoundly proud to be within the charmed circle of the Union, 
the young States not only revere each other and all, but ack- 
nowledge that blessed centripetal energ}^ which, whatever may 
be the centre of population and the relation of the sections, will 
not allow the States to flash like meteors athwart the political 
sky, but enables them to revolve and shine in appointed orbits 
on their own soft axle. 

Saratoga and Yorktown called into existence the Federal 
Union under the Constitution, but Appomattox settled forever 
its stability . Washington and his co npatriots evoked from 
the Revolution the established order, but the embattled 
bravery of our own epoch gave assurance of its inviolable 
perpetuity. That order may be likened to the sun with its 
luster and force — illuminating without consuming, orbicular 
and not erratic. The States preserve under its attraction their 
proportions of ecpiality and independence. Within the same 
shining pathway, out of their territorial nebulae, there bursts 
forth in your northern heavens, set in the forehead of the 
century, four more stars differing in glory, but each giving 
their special qualities to the system — each " repairing Avith 
their golden urns " to draw light and add fresh illumination, 

* " Dn fait entierement nouveau dans le monde, et dont rimagination elle- 
meme ne saurait saisir la portee." De Tocqueviile. 



49 

so that like the stars at the dawn of creation, each and all 
move in their orbits with symphonies attuned by the har- 
monies of the everlasting law of God. 

If my astronomic comparison be too inapt, ma}' I not 
change it for one which has a more territorial meaning ? 

Some vessels, like those of the ship of State, are sunk at 
the Spice Islands of luxury ; some are beckoned upon the 
rocks by siren voices ; some go doAvn in the whirlpool of 
civil conflict ; some perish in the wild hurricane of ambition ; 
some are broken in twain in the mid-ocean of popular in- 
difierence ; some are scuttled by roguery to get the insurance ; 
some are badly managed by the crew and some b}' the master, 
and some are crushed amidst the ice-does of despotism. 

But that vessel of State is best which, like our oAvn, with the 
skillful pilot and faithful master and vigilant crew, changeable 
at the will of the owners, sails by the charter party and brings 
its cargo into the haven of safety. 

There are now thirteen States Avest of the Mississippi. 
Soon there will be seventeen. They are Avith us, or Avill be 
with us before our Centennial year is over. When the next 
census is taken, there Avill be, most likel}', seventeen millions 
of inhabitants embraced in the seventeen States and Ter- 
ritories upon this side of the Mississippi. 

Since our three millions in the small strip upon the Atlantic 
coast we have leaped forward with such progress that nearly 
six times the original population Avliich achieved our inde- 
pendence will become partakers of that Union in that ter- 
ritory alone which Mr. Jefferson's grand project incorporated 
by the treaty of 1808. 

Steadily Avestward, since the beginning of our career, has the 
" star of the empire " Avended its Avay. It uoav looks doAvn 
upon three States in the heart of our Union — Kentucky, Ohio, 
Indiana — but the light Avhicli it sheds is so supernal and lofty 
that you may catch its gleams in remote Washington and dis- 
tant Florida, or from the pine Avoods of Maine to the orange 
groves of California. 

CONGKATULATIONS. 

Therefore, my fellow citizens, as one who has had something 
to do in Avatching Dakota as a cradled Hercules, it is my pride 
and pleasure on this natal day of States and Union, to con- 
gratulate you and your colleagues further Avest, upon the 
happy outcome of the long controversy by Avhicli, Avithout fur- 
ther petitioning Congress, or further action from that body, and 
by the application of your OAvn popular system, you reneAV 
under these Avide skies and plains that allegiance, love and 
loyalty to the Avhole country, Avithout Avhich we Avould all 
suffer disastrous eclipse. 



60 

He, indeed, is uiiworth}' of citizenslji]> in such a land who 
simpl)' looks upon the marvel oi' our newly created States 
with an eye to party af^grandizement. Parties may come and 
go, but the new Commonwealths which have added their lustre 
to our ensign, shine by right and not by sufferance. They are 
in the full radiance of Statehood. The^^ are the subject of 
patriotic congratulation, not less than those older Common- 
wealths who have recently rejoiced over the inauguration of 
our Constitution and its hrst incomparable President. 

Would it were in my power to make a horosco]3e of that 
future of America which now looms upon her horizon. It 
would not be bounded b}^ State lines, nor by ocean, lake and 
gulf. Its population would count uj), even within the lifetime 
of many who hear me, to a hundred million of people, instinct 
with enterprise ; intelligent through education ; free through 
its institutions and banded together by common memories for 
a growing and glorious future. States and not Territories, not 
ignoble dependencies but independent sovereignties, these 
make up that refinement of civil polit}^, which is the attribute 
of the American system, and which has no example in the 
annals of mankind. Its people may be composite, its system 
complex, but its destiny is one and its forces compensatory 
and beneficent. Its very machinery is worthj- of the pro- 
phetic vision of the Hebrew prophet when he saw wheel 
within wheel, even as States within States — baperium in hn- 
perio — and all moving under harmonious conditions and evolv- 
ing the greatest happiness for the greatest number,— all Avork- 
ing under energetic, vital, elemental forces which give to life 
that liberty which cannot but by annihilation die. 

The great event which stands most prominent at the head 
of our new century, which the next census will make still more 
illustrious, is the fact that the Avestern country, along with the 
cities west of the Mississippi, from St. Paul to Portland, from 
St. Louis to San Francisco, and from Bismarck to Galveston, 
will add such percentages to their growth in population and in 
wealth, that cotton and commerce will be discounted, and the 
West with its Land can give command to both north and 
south, and by its potential voice stoj) the dissensions and jeal- 
ousies of th e sections. 

CERES — THE QUEEN. 

The voice of the West will be omnipotent, for it is a voice 
which cries out from the earth, avIio is our mother. 

In the delicious mythology of Greece, the godess of the 
earth was the sister of the god of the heavens — Jupiter. As 
Ceres she became the protectress of the growing grain and 
the copious harvest. Hymns were sung and temples erected 
in her honor. At her bidding the earth yielded or refused to 



51 

yield its products. If she bade, tlie oxen draw the plow 
in the fields ; or if she forbade, in vain the seed Avas cast 
into the ground. 

She was an inventress as Avell as a goddess. She inA'ented 
agriciiltural implements. It is fabled that she gaA^e to her favor- 
ite plougher of the soil — " thrice plougher " or sub-soiler 
— a chariot draAvn by dragons, in which he fleAv through the 
air distributing corn to the different regions of the earth, sym- 
bolizing — -if it were not an anachronism — by the myth that 
distributive force which comes from the locomotive. 

Majestic in stature and amiable in character, she Avas the 
personification of the productiA'e principle of the earth. 

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that America has 
recrowned her. Her throne is in the West ; her subtle 
ministers are greater than blood and iron. Her min- 
isters are Steam and Iron. Her sceptered authority is 
obeyed ; so that not only to all our States, but to all the 
Avorld, her productions are sent. Hers is the divinely 
anointed royalt}'. Her crown is like the old iron Lombard 
crown, on Avhich is Avritten : " God has giA^en it to me ; let him 
beAvare Avho would touch it ! " 

Standing upon the threshold of these young States, and in 
the morning of, another century, may we not have glimpses of 
the far future of their destiny. It may not be that of a Para- 
dise regained ; it may not be that of a NeAV Atlantis rising 
from the Avave, and where no frost congeals and no storm vexes ; 
it may not be a Platonian ideal, Avhere the abstract and the 
object are One, and that One is all beautiful AAdtli Truth and 
Virtue ; it may not be some indefinite Utopia wearing its coro- 
nal of unreal happiness beneath Equatorial realms, but as men 
reason, is it not jDrobable that in these new States, in the Aery 
heart of the continent, may be found the shining nucleus and 
the concentrated genius of the most miraculous progress 
knoAvn to human society ? Already Ave may hear the cheerful 
music of requited toil, inspiring the builders of neAV homes 
and the founders of neAv commouAvealths, Avith the incentive 
to and the fruition of the best human energy under the most 
fa Adored institutions. 

MANIFOLD MEANINGS OF THIS DAY AND YEAR. 

Your celebration here and now is manifold in meaning. It 
combines Jefierson and the Declaration, Washington and the 
Constitution, Jefferson and Louisiana, and therefore Jefferson 
and Dakota. It embraces France Avith her revolution and our 
own, and France Avith Louisiana, Washington, Jefferson and 
Dakota, and all imbouiid in the golden rigol of republican 
institutions and human felicity. Said I not rightly, as men 
count the periods of time — it is a Avonderful year? 



52 

If other celebrations of this day be ouly the laudation of 
the historic past, then they will be a mere ostentation, which 
will die with the year. But your jubilee unites hope with 
history and advancement with memory. 

Yours, Citizens of the Northwest, is a celebration that bids the 
glowing- scenes of the future at distance, hail ! No more the 
apprehension of the stealthy tread of the moccasin. No more 
the plash of the French trader's oar in your lakes and streams. 
Touch the pulse of our active age and you will feel the throb 
of the mighty mechanic movement which interweaves your 
interchanges with the world. Place your ear to the earth and 
you will hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of the coming genera- 
tions. Stretch your vision from your dawning centenary 
eminence, and lo ! Chaos and old Night roll away before an 
auroral splendcu', " far-sinking into splendor without end." 

All hail ! Sisters of the Northwest ! As one not altogether 
unfamiliar with your territory and its aspirations — as one 
who has in the generation gone by endeavored to champion 
the rights and welcome the coming of the States upon yonr 
soutliern and eastern border, even as the liumblest of those 
accredited from the great entrepot of commerce to the National 
Congress — may I not be permitted to welcome 3'ou to the 
enjoyment of the privileges, advantages, immunities and 
guarantees which protect property, reputation, person, liberty, 
religion and life. Welcome to the Olympian race in which ye 
are about to start upon the course of continental empire ! All 
hail ! the promise of your superb morning, and may it be 
glorious to the end! Under favoring auspices may you so 
direct your destiny that the genius of your race and polity 
shall flourish beyond the imagination of man to conceive, or 

'• — Modern Homers 
Sing, or smiling Freedom write 
In their Iliads of Peace." 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

iriiiiititiillliit'lim tfPI! t"lli' 



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